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THE 



OUTLOOK OF FBEEDOM 



THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 



AMERICAN HISTORY. 



^ 

BY JUSTIN D. FULTON. 



6oS~6. 



CINCINNATI: 
PRINTED FOR THE AUTHOR BY 

MOOKE, WILSTACH, KEYS & OVEEEXD. 

SANDUSKY — WM. D. COLT. 
1856. 






Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1856, 
BY JUSTIN D. FULTON, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Northern 
District of Ohio. 



St»-reot\ped and Printed by 

William Overend & Co. 



C I N C I N N A T 






PREFACE. 



The Outlook of Freedom is gained, by following 
in the footsteps of those who have battled for the 
living God on the Western Continent. Though 
Romanism had the start by nearly two centuries — 
though the standards of her faith were planted by 
Christopher Columbus on the island of San Salvador, 
and from thence carried westward to the Pacific, south- 
ward beyond the Gulf of Mexico — beyond the isthmus 
to the dreary wastes of Patagonia, northward to the 
Canadas and round the chain of lakes to the sources 
of the Mississippi; yet we shall see how events, guided 
by a Divinity that never errs, were so shaped and 
controlled that within a century, Romanism met with 
an overthrow on the hights of Quebec, in the heart 
of Europe, and in far distant India. 

We shall see how this foe of freedom, of truth and 
of humanity then became the secret ally of a foreign 
despotism. We shall note her conquests, chronicle her 
defeats, and reveal the distorted features of an enemy 
full of subtlety, cunning and deception. 

The field is new — others have written at length 
regarding American history ; but this is the first attempt 
made to trace the elements of Romanism and Protest- 
antism as they have met face to face to try swords on 
a new field. We shall see that the stream of Roman 
superstitions, born at the foot of frozen glaciers in 
the caves of Pagan antiquity, however furiously it may 
roll on, and however turbulently it may strive to be 
acknowledged as the Gospel — has met with a signal 
defeat and an insurmountable barrier, in the freedom 
which the truth gives ; and in the swelling floods of that 
other stream which takes its rise at the throne of 
God. and flowson an undisturbed and pure river of life. 

(hi) 



IV PREFACE. 

The work is now committed to other hands. We 
can promise them much of pleasure and of profit, 
providing they, like the writer have felt sad forebod- 
ings when their eye has wandered over the land, 
viewing the evidences of power, of bitter enmity to 
freedom — of harsh denunciation, w r hich characterizes 
the progress of Eomanism in our midst ; for amid it 
all, the reader can not fail to detect the hand that rules 
the storm, pointing the eye forward to the time when 
the light of the Gospel, the influence of free institu- 
tions and the onward march of science, will roll back 
and dispel the murky clouds of superstition ; and when 
the papal throng, fleeing from the despotisms of 
Europe shall emerge into the liberty which results 
from free thought, free speech and free labor bequeath- 
ed to us by the founders of the Eepublic. 

We will not detain the reader with a record of the 
pleasures or sacrifices, of the toils, disappointments 
and hopes incident to an undertaking like the present. 
If the enterprise is successful it may stimulate other 
writers to exertion, if a failure, we shall show them 
how we have learned to endure defeat. 

The heart of the author has been encouraged by 
the flattering evidences of regard he has received 
from friends. He bespeaks for this book which is the 
product of years of patient investigation, the candid 
and impartial examination of a generous public. — 
Deal plainly with its faults and commend its virtues; 
and may God make it the seedling from which shall 
spring another strong prop, which shall stay up the 
interests of a land whose past history is full of praise, 
and whose future is all aglow with the rising beams 
of hope. For America seems indeed like the citadel 
of a world's hope, built by an Almighty hand, from 
whose high tower there is an Outlook of Freedom, 
dear alike to the historian, the patriot and the 
Christian. 

Sandusky, Ohio, July, 1856. 






CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER L 

Introductory. — A glance at Europe prior to the discovery of 
America by Christopher Columbus 9 

CHAPTER II. 

The West Indies. — Columbus discovers San Salvador — .Mistakes 
it for one of the Islands lying adjacent to India — The Natives — 
The cruelty of the Spaniards — The destruction of the Native 
population — Cruelty of Ovando — Persecution of Columbus — 
The condition of Cuba and Hayti 30 

CHAPTER III. 

The Conquest of Mkxico and Peru. — Cortez — His Character — 
-Montezuma— The characteristics of the Mexicans — Scenes in 
the Conquest — The overthrow of the Mexican and commence- 
ment of the Spanish rule — Peru — Its conquest by Pizarro — 
The results — Influence of the Jesuits 59 



VI CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER IV. 

History of Jesuit Missions in North America. — The origin of 
the Jesuits — Loyola — His plan — Distinguished French Mis- 
sionaries — When they came — Their success and defeat 90 

CHAPTER V. 

The Colonial History of the United States. — Early settlement 
of Florida — Fernando de Soto — Discovery of the Mississippi — 
French Huguenots — Their persecution by the Spaniards — 
Gaspard de Coligny — His character — The slaughter of Protes- 
tants by Catholics in Florida — Massacre of St. Bartholomew 124 

CHAPTER VI. 

The Overthrow of the Temporal Power of Popery. — The tri- 
umphs of Xavier in Japan and China — Luther's attack — The 
overthrow of French influence in India — The success of 
Frederic of Prussia, of De Wolfe on the hights of Quebec, 
planted the standards of Protestantism in the heart of 
Europe and America 139 

/ 
CHAPTER VII. 

History of Religious Freedom in the United States. — The 
lecture of Archbishop Hughes on "The- Catholic Chapter in 
the History of the United States," noticed — A comparison of 
the United States and South America — Religious Freedom — 
Its establishment claimed for the Catholics of Maryland — 
That claim disproved — Roger Williams of Rhode Island, the 
standard-bearer of Soul liberty — James II — His character — 
Roger Williams and Lord Calvert in contrast 166 






CONTENTS. yii 

CHAPTER VIII. 

Views of the Papists with regard to the United States. — 
The purposes and plans of the Papal Hierarchy — How they 
regard the United States — The Secret Societies of Europe 
plotting the overthrow of the Republic — A contrast between 
Catholic and Protestant Missionaries 189 

CHAPTKR IX. 

Foreign Relations of the United States. — Non-intervention 
an American doctrine proclaimed by Washington and Hamil- 
ton — By whom opposed — Naturalization Laws — Foreign In- 
fluence 208 

CHAPTER X. 

The good and evil effects of American Institutions. — 
America the place of refuge for the oppressed — Equal Rights 
— How abused — Dangers arising therefrom — The origin of the 
American and Foreign Christian Union — Norton, Baird, Dow- 
ling, Tyng, and Hague — Their work 229 

CHAPTER XL 

The Catholic School Question — Its past and present con- 
dition. — Settlers of New England eager for Schools — Catholics 
object to use of Bible — Gov. Seward, D'Arey McGee, and 
Meagher on School Question — Reports of State Committees — 
Nunneries C 242 

CHAPTER XII. 

The Church Property Bill. — Its history — The bill of Senator 
James 0. Putnam, of New York— The charges preferred by 
Hon. Erastus Brooks against Archbishop Hughes 270 



viii CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER XIII. 

The Religious Freedom of Europe a desideratum to Amer- 
icans. — The overthrow of Religious Liberty in the Old World 
— Its influence upon America — Do Catholics fight as freemen ? 
— Archbishop Hughes — His history and pretensions — Metro- 
politan Hall meeting, in 1853, in behalf of Religious Freedom. 299 

CHAPTER XIV. 

Appeals op European Republicans and Despots to our sym- 
pathies. — Louis Kossuth — His reception by the American 
people — The doctrine of Non-intervention maintained by 
Millard Fillmore and defended by Henry Clay — The influence 
of Kossuth upon the German population in the United States 
— Gavazzi and Bedini — Their influence 326 

CHAPTER XV. 

The Outlook of Freedom. — The American movement — Its suc- 
cess, and its overthrow — Opposition to Despotism was the 
secret of its power — Its alliance with Despotism the source 
of its weakness 345 

CHAPTER XVI. 

A Glance at Europe in 1848 and 1849. — Pio Nono— Joseph Maz- 
zini — The hopes built upon Italian Freedom — The overthrow 
of the Republic by the French— Persecution of Bible readers. 357 

CHAPTER XVII. 
The Influence and Prosperity of Protestantism and Popery 
compared.— The Truth gives Freedom—The church of Rome is 
enslaved— Freedom — What it is doing for the nations— The 
past and present condition of the ruling nations— Estimates of 
the numbers and power of the churches— Protestantism occu- 
pies the center of Europe and America— The triumphs of 
Truth— The condition of Catholicism throughout the world 368 



THE 

ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

IN 

AMERICAN HISTORY. 



CHAPTER I. 

A Glance at Europe prior to the Discovery of America by 
Christopher Columbus. 

The Eoman Catholic element can be traced through 
all the meanderings of the world's history during a 
period of fifteen hundred years. The tree was planted 
in Pagan soil long before the rising beams of modern 
civilization illumined the path of empire; Columbus, 
though he laid at his monarch's feet the record of a 
discovery which startled Europe from its long repose, 
did little more than plant on the shores of a forest- 
world seed gathered in ancestral climes, which, spring- 
ing up, has brought forth a hundred fold. 

This element, as it runs through and tinges the his- 
tory of America, is but a continuation of the history of 
Roman Catholicism, and whoever watches the stream 
issue from its native channel in the Old World, and 
beholds it creating for itself a channel in the New, finds 
that it remains unchanged in appearance or destiny, 
and that it is easily recognized and followed. 

(9) 



10 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

Others have fully exposed the absurdities of the 
theological tenets of the Church of Rome. She has 
been shown to rest her hope of advancement and suc- 
cess not upon faith in Christ, but upon a system of works 
which blind and befog the ignorant, and which en- 
shrouded the sky of her despairing votaries with the 
murky vapors of superstition. We shall gather toge- 
ther the fruits borne by the trees which make up this 
wilderness of error, and strive to point the eye of a gen- 
erous people toward a land of gospel light and liberty, 
where the green fields of truth, veined by crystal 
streams, invite the worn and weary to an abundant rest. 

Romanism is not a system of religious belief. When 
her founders forsook the path marked out by the New 
Testament and entered the arena of conflict, determined 
to wrest the trident from Pagan Rome, they abandoned 
every principle dear to humble followers of the Naza- 
rene, and became a political power, whose onward course 
was marked by blight and ruin. This power beggared 
and then enslaved Europe. It covered the fairest por- 
tion of this green earth with the pall of night, and 
hung temples used to songs of praise and words of 
prayer with the drapery of gloom. 

When Columbus reared the standards of the cross on 
the island of San Salvador, Europe was groaning under 
this accumulated weight of wrong. The reaction com- 
menced so soon as an avenue was opened to thought, 
and while the Jesuits were penetrating the wilderness, 
were communicating with rude natives and making 
strenuous endeavors to instruct them in the forms and 
rituals of worship, reform was busy in Europe. It 
arose as a giant refreshed with wine, from the couch of 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. ll 

luxurious ease, and with rapid stride surmounted the 
obstacles lying in its path. History shows that Roman- 
ism had unlimited sway in America, and acted out her- 
self until the triumphs gained by Protestantism made 
it dangerous, when because of defeat she was forced for 
a time to wear the mask. 

The historian then has to deal with a principle which 
has withstood the fall and crash of empires and the 
revolution of ages. He has to deal with a fixed fact, 
which made its appearance upon our continent nearly 
four centuries ago ; which began, a spectral cloud dot- 
ting the blue skies of the tropics, and now hangs like a 
frowning tempest, dark, ominous and portentous ; a fact 
that is a sojourner with us — that plants upon the most 
costly edifices of our land the cross, around which gath- 
ers, to a great extent, the poor, the ignorant and super- 
stitious ; that is now, though boasting of its love of 
religious and political liberty, evidencing, by its hostility 
to the Bible, to truth, to education, to free speech and 
independence of thought, that freedom, both religious 
and political, is the object of its hate and persecution, 
here and throughout the world. 

It is a fact worthy of notice, that the discovery of 
truth and the discovery of a continent took place at or 
near the same time ; that while God was leading the 
thought of Europe to make discoveries in science, in 
geography, and in navigation, in England Wickliffe 
and others were preaching the truth, and were thus 
preparing the way for a reformation in religion, and a 
revolution in mind, that was destined to change and 
disinthrall a shackled humanity. It was a remark of 
Jonathan Edwards, " that the wheels of Providence are 



12 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

not turned about by blind chance, but they are full of 
eyes round about, and are guided by the Spirit of God." 
The Bible is a faithful record of God's dealings with 
His chosen people, and His declared will published to the 
world. It points man toward a path that leads up 
from want and wretchedness to heaven, and gives him 
a guide so plain and unmistakable that a fool need not 
err therein. History is the record of God's dealings 
with the world. It enables us to see that there is a 
Power, back of all things, shaping and guiding and 
controlling individual and national destiny. " Facts, 
faithfully ascertained and placed in proper contiguity, 
become, of themselves, the links of a brightly burnished 
chain, connecting events with their causes, and marking 
the line along which the electric power of truth is con- 
veyed from generation to generation. Historic truth 
may establish itself as a science, and the principles that 
govern human affairs, extending like a path of light 
from century to century, become the highest demonstra- 
tion of the superintending Providence of God." 

It is the privilege of all to gaze into past history, as 
a mirror, where the future may be seen. It is sub- 
limely true that God moves in history. There will be 
many facts to demonstrate this, in our brief review of 
the period whence our history takes its rise. How else 
could we account for it, that Henry VII, of England, 
instead of Ferdinand, of Spain, lost the opportunity of 
fitting out Columbus in his voyage of discovery? Had 
his brother not been defeated in his plans before Col- 
umbus had won from the court of Spain the means to 
realize his splendid dream, the fleet would have sailed 
down the Thames ; Englishmen, instead of Spaniards, 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 13 

would have settled the West Indies, and South Ameri- 
ca, rather than New England, would have been the 
home of the Anglo-Saxon race. Why is it that no large 
society, of which the tongue is not Teutonic, has ever 
turned Protestant, and that wherever a language de- 
rived from that of ancient Rome is spoken, the religion 
of modern Rome to this day prevails? Italy, nor 
Spain, nor Germany — none of them, nor all of them 
together — were destined to exert the controlling influ- 
ence upon the continent of America. It was England ; 
and we shall see how the Providence of God ordered it, 
that England, instead of Germany, should revolt from 
the church of Rome ; how Englishmen were restrained 
from coming here until the proper time ; how, by per- 
secution, by trial, and by education, the bone and sinew 
of a nation were being prepared to lay the foundation 
of the temple of liberty in the distant regions of this 
forest continent, fast becoming the garden of the world ; 
"how a few resolute Puritans — who, in the cause of 
their religion, feared neither the rage of the ocean, nor 
the hardships of uncivilized life — neither the fangs of 
savage beasts, nor the tomahawks of more savage men 
— have built, amid the primeval forests, villages which 
are now great and opulent cities, but which have, 
through every change, retained some trace of the char- 
acter derived from their founders. 7 ' How wisely it was 
ordained that Mexico, Peru and the Canadas should be 
colonized by the governments of Spain and France, while 
the centre of this western world has been peopled by 
stout-hearted and God-fearing men from every part of 
old England! We shall find that while, in the perfect- 
ing and carrying out of this great unfolding plan of 



14 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

Providence, the Spaniards were daring the dangers of 
the deep, familiarizing themselves with the untrodden 
wilds of the ocean, or with the no less dangerous wilds 
of islands and forests — while they were timidly creep- 
ing along the shores of seas, penetrating the deep soli- 
tudes of continents — thinkers in Germany and in 
England were getting ready their bark to launch forth 
into the labyrinthine mazes of speculation, as with the 
Star of Bethlehem for their guide, the Bible for their 
compass, they cut loose from error, and pushed out upon 
the shoreless main of truth. Thus, while forests were 
being leveled, rivers ascended and mountains scaled in 
the New World, the accumulations of error, which had 
been gathering strength for centuries, were being re- 
moved, the area of scientific investigation was being 
mapped out, and streams of knowledge were permitted 
to flow forth, fertilizing, as they went, the continents 
and islands of the eastern hemisphere ; while the Span- 
iards were busy in gleaning sands of gold, the Anglo- 
Saxon race were no less eager in the pursuit of unseen 
treasures, which were to be garnered in the heavens. 

Others have written the history of Boman Catholicism 
in Europe. They have led us to her cradle, where the 
infant slumbered in comparative security, rocked by 
superstition, which assumed the garb of truth. They 
have presented her again in the form of a mother, now 
doating and fond, now cruel and tyrannical. They have 
kindly lifted the veil that concealed the movements 
of the serpent, as noiselessly it has crept within the 
sanctum of the order, until, with slimy folds, it has 
coiled around the victim, pillowed its head upon the 
beating heart, taking captive the church, and guiding 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 15 

and controlling its aspirations and hopes. Thus, while 
the Eden of history was invaded by the enemy of God 
and the destroyer of man, in the form of a serpent, 
which coiled around the tuft of the tree of knowledge, 
we find the Eden of the church taken captive by the 
same foe, clothed in the garments of avarice and 
superstition. In the first instance, the key to the wide 
realms of knowledge was proffered ; in the latter, the 
door was thrown open to wealth and splendor. 

A century passes, and history presents her, grown 
strong and mighty, with her towering cathedrals, 
decked with the costly trappings and tinselry of show. 
Others have portrayed her power, chronicled her con- 
quests, and celebrated her triumphs. Aided by this 
light, we see her now laying waste the fairest portions 
of Persia ; now desolating the land of the Moors, and 
erecting her monuments upon the Nile : now from the 
Holy Sepulchre comes a wild fanatic, wrapped in a 
gown and belted by a cord ; and he calls millions after 
him to rescue, from the hands of the infidel, the tomb 
of the Messiah. Multitudes bestrew the plain with 
their bleaching bones, before we listen to the shout of 
victory echoing and re-echoing along their native hills, 
as, laden with spoils and trophies, they return to enrich 
their homes. 

The scene changes, and we find her proud monuments 
leveled ; her heroes and saints have been by Saracen 
arrows made to bite the dust. The sepulchre, won by 
toil and treasure, is lost. The sky-pointing summits 
of her hope are wrapped in gloom ; her shrines and 
altars are bespattered with gore ; her plate has been 
used for exchange, her vaulted cathedrals for stables, 



16 



THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 



and the palaces and conventicles of her priests have 
been converted into homes for the populace and the 
soldiery. 

Behold her again, striving to recover from loss. 
Though rent by internal dissensions, she is yet strong 
and mighty, with a dead past forgotten, with a hopeful 
future growing bright. Thus was she in the fifteenth 
century. Error crept forth unblushingly, and " basked 
his scaly circles in the sun." The passions of men were 
unbridled ; their hopes and fears were made to fill the 
coffers of the church, by procuring salvation in Christ, 
or release from hell, by the payment of gold. The 
tastes and appetites of the clergy were cared for by an 
indulgent mother — aye, they were nursed by a tropic 
growth. 

Behold the clustering group of great minds, that 
found in this pregnant era of history a birth and edu- 
cation — incitements to enterprise, and a world for 
action. In 1435, Christopher Columbus was born; 
Martin Luther first saw the light of day in 1483 ; the 
heaven-born radiance of the Gospel, in 1516 ; Erasmus, 
a most illustrious character in the republic of literature 
and the cause of religion, was born in 1467 j, Tyndal, 
in 1477 ; Melancthon, in 1497 ; Ignatius Loyola, in 
1491 ; Charles V, in 1500; John Calvin, in 1509, and 
Elizabeth, Queen of England, in 1533. This group 
forms a galaxy of talent such as the world had scarcely 
seen for ages. They all traveled in different paths, but 
each wound around a common eminence, leading all to 
distinction. The influences exerted and sent forth by 
them live yet ; they have encompassed the globe. It 
is a common remark, that circumstances make men; 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 17 

that they are the creatures of time. " The time called 
them forth ; the time did everything, they nothing but 
what any one else might have done." "This," says 
Carlyle, " seems to me but melancholy work. The tim»> 
call forth ! Alas ! we have known the times call loudly 
enough for their great man, but not find him when 
they called ! He was not there ; Providence had not 
sent him ; the time, calling its loudest, had to go down 
to confusion and wreck, because he would not come 
when called; for, if we will think of it, no time need 
have gone to ruin, could it have found a man great 
enough, a man wise and good enough ; wisdom to dis- 
cern truly what the time wanted — valor to lead it on 
the right road thither: these are the salvation of any 
time." The history of the world is the biography of 
great men. In all epochs of the world's history wi* 
shall find the great man to have been the indispensable 
saviour of his epoch — the lightning without which the 
fuel never would have burnt. " Men, like stars, appear 
on the horizon at the command of God." How glorious 
to be such a star, ever shining so truthfully in the 
great moral firmament of truth — stars of God's own 
making, not the patched-up work of genius or literature, 
or of effeminate society. Such were the reformers of 
this period ; they shine now in that resplendent constel- 
lation of which the Saviour is the sun ; and as, in the 
sun's eclipse, we behold the great stars shining in the 
heavens, so, in the absence of Him, who is the light of 
the New Jerusalem, we behold these glowing ever in 
reflected light, and like the moon throwing from her 
silver sheen the glory of her departed king back upon 
the world. 
2 



18 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

Let us go back to this critical and important era, and 
learn what deeds performed by these illustrious men 
have given their names a place in history, and made 
their age the starting point of reform. Erasmus trans- 
lated the Greek Testament into easy Latin, and thus 
made it accessible to the reading world. Tyndal went 
still farther, and gave Englishmen the Bible in their 
own tongue. Thus was the truth scattered throughout 
Great Britain, despite the opposition of the Church of 
Borne. Erasmus " laid the egg afterward hatched by 
Luther." At the same time (1517) that Erasmus gave 
England the New Testament, Luther began his attack 
upon the church. At this time the great German 
reformer developed a principle which sprung a maga- 
zine that, exploding, rent asunder the rocky barriers 
of the mountains of ignorance and superstition, pouring 
as from a volcano's crater, the lurid lava of truth over 
empires and continents. Calvin, planting his feet upon 
the Word of God, pointed his long, lean finger toward 
the corruptions of the church, and stirred up the dregs 
of error that so long had slumbered side by side with 
the golden grains of truth. Ignatius Loyola, the founder 
of the order of Jesus, possessed a mind that enabled 
him to contest with Luther the honor of fashioning the 
American history and character. The institution created 
by him early wrapped itself about the history of our 
country, and aided mightily in casting the spiritual 
horoscope of our continent. Seven years before Ply- 
mouth Bock received the disembarkation from the May- 
flower, and twenty-three years before Bhode Island 
had its first European settler, France and the Boman 
Catholic religion had established itself in Maine. Still 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 19 

sooner, Jesuits WON in Nova Scotia. In 1G 2 5, Jesuit 
lionaries were laboring on the banks of the St. Law- 
rence: from thtnct the J journeyed in different direc- 
tions, stimulated by a common object, striving for a 
common iroal. 

Charles V. consolidated an empire, conquered Ike 
Papacy, imprisoned the Pope — now making that tre- 
memlous engine subserve his pro nd anon becom- 

Rig its moft humble and del rvant : now joining 

friendly bands with Ibnrv VIII. of England, and anon 

becoming his deadly fce in the cabinet and on the 
field; now, setting in operation I which ; > 

the different nations of Eur other in i c 

brotherhood, and again tin their v. 

ler the torch of revolution, whi.-h driv< - II i v back to 

his home, breaks the powfef of Francis, an<l make- the 
Pope — that WOUld-be V ;t — do Ins bidding, and 

perform his most menial work. C MM the 

center of European influence, raised the Spanish p 
to the culminating point in greatness, and. by co&qU 

ettended the area of empire bo soch an extent thai the 
sun never ceased to shine npon bis dominions. Elisabeth 
made 1 England, during her reign, what Charles V. had 

made Spain a few year> before H I conquered 

the Armada: her armies and hef tr eos ui strength 

and encouragement to William Prince of Orange in the 

Netherlands, and Henry of Navarre in Prance. Eng- 
land became the asylum for the oppressed of every 
clime — the cradle where the Protestant faith was rocked 
in its second infancy, and the furnace whore, by perse- 
cution and martyrdom, the spirit of revolt was engen- 
dered and cultivated that crave to America its Puritan 



20 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

element, and drove from the breast of a punctilious 
mother that seedling of strength which, planted in a 
wilderness, finally wrested from the parent state the 
right of self-government, and secured for herself the 
charter of our liberties. Elizabeth, by passing the 
Uniformity Act — an act that brought force to bear on 
the conscience, and fetters upon the limbs — blindly but 
surely laid the foundation of republican institutions ; 
while Christopher Columbus bridged the ocean, and dis- 
covered the Atlantis of the ancient dreamers. 

Prominent and distinctive features characterized each 
and all of the individuals above named. They were 
all honest. They had a singleness of purpose that is 
remarkable. There is, too, an individuality about them 
that enables the historian to paint upon the canvas of 
the past, life-likenesses of each. Separate, isolated and 
alone, each one stands forth the representative of some 
particular action, era or course of policy. All would 
call Luther first and foremost among the opposers of 
Popery ; Loyola is equally prominent in defending the 
Papacy. John Calvin, the impetuous reformer, seems, 
like our own Edwards, to have burnt his image upon 
his age with the exact proportions that a red-hot bolt 
would burn into a board its length, size and form. 
Every lineament of his countenance can be seen, and 
his words, even now seem to be echoing round the 
world. 

The ao;e of Elizabeth is her age alone. It has its 
niche in the temple of fame. She still occupies her 
throne. There never can be a usurper. Tyndal, whose 
life was devoted to translation, can be seen fleeing with 
his manuscripts from town to town, from country 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 21 

to country, that he may write and print the English 
Bible. 

Luther and Loyola are often referred to as the chief 
molders of American character ; but, by a wise provi- 
sion of Providence, the glory of starting, perfecting, 
and carrying out any work, can never all be ascribed 
to any one individual. And indeed, at this time many 
names stand, in the arrangement 'which the develop- 
ment of time has made, before either Luther or Loyola. 

About the year 1581, Robert Brown, a weak and 
insinuating man, unsettled and inconsistent in all his 
views, in compliance with a freak of fancy, by endeav- 
oring to model the form of the church after the infant 
community that was founded by the apostles, despite 
after exertions and recantations, sprung the thought 
which afterward grew into the system first styled Puri- 
tan, afterward Independent, and now styled the Congre- 
gational element. Brown, not being able to withstand 
the fires of persecution, shortly after he was driven to 
the Netherlands, deserted his followers, returned to 
England, took orders in the Established Church, and 
led an idle and dissolute life. 

The unknown and unhonored Robert Brown has done 
more for American character than either Luther or 
Loyola, and has made himself the rival and competitor 
of Calvin, John Knox and Robinson. 

" It has been the boast of the order of Jesuits, that 
Providence made the birth of their own Loyola to coin- 
cide so nearly with that of Luther, by the same arrange- 
ment of Divine benevolence that is said ever to provide 
the antidote in the vicinity of the poison. Their writers 
are also accustomed to say that, in bringing so closely 



22 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

together the rise of their founder and the discoveries 
of Columbus, God had evidently pointed their way to 
those missionary labors upon our continent in which 
they engaged so earnestly and successfully. Well may 
the Protestant, and especially the citizen of these Uni- 
ted States, bless, in his turn, that fatherly care of Di- 
vine Providence, whicli neither allowed the era of 
American colonization to be hastened, nor that of the 
Eeformation to be deferred." Had these events been 
differently arranged — had Spanish, and not English, 
blood flowed in the veins of our first settlers ; or had 
the Mayflower borne to our shores the foundations of a 
Catholic colony, and had Koger Williams been a Jesuit 
missionary; or had the schemes of French conquest, 
that would have made Canada but the starting point 
of North American empire, been successful ; had the 
religion and faith of Luther prevailed, instead of that 
of Calvin and Robinson, the guide and grand mover in 
the Puritan commonwealth, and of Williams, the im- 
mortal head of the colony in Ehode Island; had the 
converts to the Catholic faith and the establishments of 
the Jesuits been of a permanent character, how different 
had been the annals of our country and of our entire 
race ! " America had wanted her Washington ; the 
impulse of modern revolutions had remained yet to be 
given ; the name of Lexington had continued still a 
common and unhonored sound, and the dial of the world 
had been put back for more than the ten degrees, by 
which, at the prayer of Hezekiah, the sun went down 
ou the dial of Ahaz." Whereas, at this time, the Lu- 

° Charlevoix Histoire de Paraguay. 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 23 

theran church in the United States numbers but 250,- 
000 communicants, and places where the Jesuits reared 
their chapels and read mass to the wild natives, are 
lost amid the twilight and uncertainties of the long 
ago, and are known only as legends or monuments, 
which mark the places sacred to the memory of the 
" black-robed missionary." 

Let us take a cursory glance at the causes which led 
to the discovery of America, and we will leave the Old 
World, confining our wanderings henceforth to the New. 
The art of printing, which made literature current, and 
gave wings to thought, had been invented. This drew 
the manuscripts, covered with the dust of centuries, 
from the cloisters, and gave books to the million. It 
disentombed Plato and Aristotle, and bade them go 
forth, dressed in a befitting garb, to commune with 
mankind as instructors of the fogged and blinded stu- 
dent of metaphysics and scepticism. It unshackled the 
mind, and enabled it to throw off the yoke, that it 
might afterward wear the cloak of the prophet ; while 
the discovery of the compass and the quadrant led the 
mariner, who had heretofore confined himself to shore, 
out into the wilds of the ocean. India, the El Dorado 
of the East, exerted a mighty influence upon the enter- 
prises of this period. For ages her products had been 
conveyed, by the Gulf of Persia, the Euphrates, the 
Indus and the Oxus, to the Caspian and the Mediter- 
ranean seas, thence to take a new destination for the 
various marts of Europe. 

To discover a new inlet to that fair portion of the 
East which so long, with its beauty and luxury, had 



24 THE ROMAN OATHOUC ELEMENT 



been the star hanging over the cradle of wealth and 
independence, became a raging passion among the lead- 
ing nations of Europe. In this pursuit, the spirit of the 
Crusades, the spirit of chivalry, and the spirit of ro- 
mance found a new and appropriate field. The Portu- 
guese, governed, guided and directed by the sublime 
genius of Prince Henry, reproduced the charts and 
guides which had been buried in the monasteries of the 
monks. He gathered around him the talent and genius 
of the age, and pointed it toward India, around the 
coast of Africa. The Pope, having guarantied to him 
the right of discovery, granted plenary indulgence to all 
who should die in these expeditions. Mariners, who 
formerly looked with distrust upon a boisterous and 
apparently shoreless expanse — who had seen in every 
bold headland or far-stretching promontory a wall and 
barrier to progress — now resolutely dared the dangers 
of the deep, aided by the compass and quadrant. The 
republic of Genoa drank in the spirit. Columbus, 
surrounded by the stir and bustle of discovery, commu- 
ning with persons who had risen by it to fortune and 
greatness, and voyaging in the very tracks of its recent 
triumphs, was aroused to a high pitch of enthusiasm in 
the cause. Unknown to him was the source whence 
came the logs of wood, carved with rude imagery and 
covered with strange grasses. Geography became his 
favorite — I may say his constant — study. The fabled 
land, often in. the distance seen, but never explored, 
became the centre to the circumference of his thought; 
the conviction deepened within him " that westward the 
star of empire was destined to wing its way." The 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 25 

feeling took possession of his soul, and thrilled his being, 
that God had chosen him to discover a new track to 
India, whereby wealth might be acquired to rescue the 
Holy Sepulchre from the iron grasp of the infidel. The 
Geography of Ptolemy, and the charts drawn upon the 
distant deserts of the East, pointed him across the ocean. 
Columbus became an enthusiast. He thought alone of 
liis mission ; he meant that the courts of Europe should 
think of it in like manner. Toward the West lay the 
road to wealth — this was his prophecy. This enthusi- 
asm and honesty arrested the attention of princes and 
courts. By these he conquered their stupidity, and 
overcame their unbelief. We, who look with cold con- 
cern upon the expeditions of a Franklin, regardless 
whether he or his followers shall succeed in breaking 
the icy bolts of the North, that he may pass unscathed 
around into more balmy climes ; who expect revolutions 
of empires as a matter of course, and grow tired of the 
flood of literature that sweeps across our land ; who 
have seen this continent ribbed with iron, and strung 
with wiry nerves, can form no adequate conception of the 
tumultuous period in which our ancestry lived and 
moved. Wandering pilgrims from the Holy Lands, 
the disabled soldier of the Crusades had returned en- 
riched with spoils and wild with fanaticism. The waves 
of a continental excitement were plowing the bosom and 
disturbing the depths of the sea of humanity ; for the 
hoarse note of this tempest of strife had become the 
lullaby of genius and the music of the soul. India's 
wealth had built cities and made empires mighty. 
Venice, from being poor and mean, humble and obscure, 



26 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

had come to sit in state, throned on her hundred isles, 
a ruler of the waters and her powers. Genoa, too, 
walled in and straitened on the land side by rugged 
mountains, carried on a wide and extended commerce; 
her sails whitened every sea, her ships, going out poor, 
returned laden with spoils won by arms, and wealth 
gleaned by industry. Portugal had accomplished much, 
but planned more. In the prime of manhood her prince 
died, and it was reserved for Vasca de Gama to double 
the Cape called, afterward, Good Hope, and furl his 
sails by the banks of the Ganges. Think it not 
strange that this age gave birth to the discovery of 
America. Great occasions call out great minds, and it 
is in accordance with a wise provision of Providence, 
that, in every critical period of history, there have been 
those whose superiority of intellect and brilliancy of 
genius enabled them to guide and command. Such have 
been the rulers in the province of mind — the land- 
marks of humanity. 

"The men of this period," says Duff, "saturated with 
the spirit of the age, and inflamed with the swelling 
reports of tradition and of distant fame, sallied forth, 
prepared not for novelties merely ; they really expected 
and were resolved to meet with wonders ; and, in the 
absence of real wonders, such was the fervor of their 
enthusiasm, that it would have thrown the most brill- 
iant coloring over the tamest scenes, magnifying the 
most ordinary and common-place into the marvelous, con- 
verting every field into a garden of delight, every rock 
into a mountain of gold, every valley into Elysian bow- 
ers. What, then, must have been the effect on such 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 27 

rodent and romantic spirits, when they found the ideal 
pictures actually eclipsed by the tangible and the visi- 
ble; when even on their glowing- fancies, the reality 
burst in a blaze of unexpected splendor I Around them 
were strown the most stupend -us monuments of art, 
tombs and temples, palaces and towers, that seemed to 
btepeak an age when genii and demigods were denizens 
of earth and compeers of mortal man. Before them, too, 
and on every side, nature flung forth her stores with a 
prolific beauty unknown in northern climes. To say 
that they were filled with amazement, is to say little. 
The impression is altogether overpowering. From that 
time the very name of India throughout Europe was the 
symbol and representative of all that ifl 
and magnificent in the products of nature and art : un- 
sealing to the romancer and the poet a never-failing 
fount of imagery, which blending with the flowers of 
Parnassus and the gentle ripplings of Helicon, has been 
woven into the richest drapery of modern boh 

Such in brief, is a portraiture of the fifteenth century. 
Such was the food that fed Columbus: such the soil on 
which he grew, and these were the scenes that surround- 
ed his cradle, that developed his manhood, turned his 
eye westward, and bade him go and fulfill a destiny and 
perform a mission, which, when recorded, as it then ap- 
peared to men, for boldness of thought and grandeur of 
conception, is second to none other chronicled in history. 

The thought of a shorter route to the Indies lay 
crude and unshapen down in his mind alone. Perhaps 
before him flitted, at times, some vision that pointed to 
a glorious future, and whispered of success. The world 



28 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

called it a dream, and pointed the finger of scorn at the 
visionary man. But this hindered him not. It made him 
count over again the chances of success. With the 
trumpet peal of fanaticism still sounding in his ears ; 
with a mind deeply imbued with the characteristic zeal- 
otism of the age, and eminently distinguished for those 
attainments in general science which enabled him to 
argue with, and convert to his belief, the most distin- 
guished scholars of his time ; he began his journey ings 
to the different courts of Europe, to offer a New World 
to any who would enable him to carry out his plans. 
The story of his vexatious trials, of his discouragements 
and heart-sickening defeats ; how, following in the ret- 
inue of Isabella, he was despised by courtiers and so- 
called philosophers ; how year after year, he clung to this 
one central thought-of his being ; how he wasted his sub- 
stance by supporting himself during long and fruitless 
delays ; and how, one day, sitting penniless and way- 
worn, by the way side, he begged a crust of bread and 
a flask of water of a friendly monk, for his dying boy, 
and thus stumbled upon the patron whose eloquence 
and zeal made the lovely Isabella pledge her jewels to 
furnish from her exhausted treasury an out-fit for the 
despairing prophet — will never lose its interest ; for this 
reveals to us the thorny path up which all climb that 
reach an enviable fame. 

Thus did the assistance of a Catholic beget for him 
success. A Catholic court defrayed the expenses of his 
voyage. An unseen Hand guided him to the lovely 
regions of the South, securing for Catholic Spain the 
Spanish West Indies, Mexico and Peru. When the 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 29 

first Spanish caraval moored itself in those balmy climes, 
the cross was first and foremost. When that band of 
resolute men first stepped upon the shore of an unknown 
world, they planted the standards of their faith, and 
flung out to the land-breeze the banner upon which 
was inscribed the crass; its folds floated with becoming 
pride over the fields and homes of a hospitable race. 
When we bid this standard adieu, we find it still flung 
out to the land-breeze, but it is no longer the object of 
wonder and rejoicing to this friendly race ; for we leave 
it standing among a thousand graves, loaded with the 
curses and imprecations of the unfortunate dead. 



30 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 



CHAPTER II. 

THE WEST INDIES. 

Columbus discovers San Salvador — Mistakes it for one of the islands 
lying adjacent to India — The Natives — The cruelty of the Span- 
iards — The destruction of the native population — Cruelty of 
Ovando — Persecution of Columbus — The condition of Cuba and 
Hayti. 

It was on the third of August, 1492, a little before 
sunrise, that Christopher Columbus, undertaking the 
most memorable enterprize that human genius ever 
planned, or human skill and courage ever performed, set 
sail from Spain for the discovery of the Western World. 
On the 13th of October, about two hours before midnight, 
a light in the island of San Salvador was descried by 
Columbus, from the deck of his vessel, and America was, 
for the first time, beheld by European eyes. The Admi- 
ral, on the following morning, attended by his followers, 
stepped upon shore, and, with tears of joy streaming 
down his cheeks, threw himself upon his knees, kissed 
the earth, and returned thanks to God. Rising, he drew 
his sword, planted the cross, displayed the royal standard, 
and, as the banners of the enterprize were flung to the 
breeze, he took possession of the soil ; and a connection, 
that was to subsist forever, was established between 
Europe and America. Of the vast and important conse- 
quences that depended on this spectacle, perhaps not 
even the comprehensive mind of Columbus was fully 



IN AMERICA* HISTORY. 31 

sensible : but to the end of time the heart of every human 
bring who reads the story, will confess the interest of 
that eventful moment, and partake of the feelings of that 
illustrious man. 

Columbus, imagining that he had but stumbled upon 
one of the islands that dot the sea which washes the shore 
of India, called them West Indies. An acquaintance 
was speedily formed with the natives, from whom they 
heard of land, northward, southward, and westward, 
yellow with gold, its streams glittering with pearls, its 
forests swarming with inhabitants, ruled by powerful 
sovereigns, who were served from gold cups, and neck- 
laced with diamond* Hay ti. on the evening of the Gth 
of December, revealed itself to Columbus. San Salvador 
had been visited : Cuba had also been explored. Gold 
was the object of their pursuit ; and the brave pioneers, 
delighted with the story of the rude natives, pushed on 
with all possible speed, hoping, in the unseen and undis- 
covered island, to find the realization of their dreams, 
and a recompense for their toils. At length, far to 
the south-east, lofty ranges of mountains, whose tower- 
ing peaks lost themselves in the regions of eloudland, 
attracted the attention of the sailor, and the Indian. 
The latter exclaimed 4i Bohio,'' which was understood to 
mean the land of gold. Hayti captivated the Spaniards, 
and caused the restless adventurers to terminate their 
voyage, that they might search its hidden depths. M Its 
mountains were higher and more rocky than those of the 
other islands, but the rocks rose from among rich forests. 
The mountains swept down into luxuriant plains and 
green savannas, while the appearance of cultivated fields, 
of numerous fires by night, and columns of smoke by 



32 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

day, showed it to be populous. It rose before them in 
all the splendor of tropical vegetation, one of the most 
beautiful islands in the world, and doomed to be one of 
the most unfortunate." 

The inhabitants of this island have been described as 
a people of gentle and compassionate disposition, with a 
constitution both of mind and body, too frail to withstand 
oppression, or to support themselves under its weight. 
Their foreheads were high and broad ; their eyes were 
remarkably fine, but restless and roving ; their forms 
tall and straight; their carriage noble and commanding. 
Such was the race doomed, by a strange fatality, to fall 
victims to the indolence, avarice, and wantonness of 
discoverers. 

For years, when the sages of the nations gathered 
around their council fires, an old tradition had been rela- 
ted, that a white race should descend from the skies to 
lead them on to wealth and happiness. Their eye ran 
forward to it as the grand event which should usher in 
the millennium of peace and prosperity. When famine 
pressed upon them — when wars thinned their numbers, 
or dangers begirt them — the star of relief revealed itself 
in this cherished prophecy. Their hopes were raised, 
their strength increased, their warriors became more 
valiant, and their women endured suffering more pa- 
tiently. It seems not strange, that they gazed upon 
those white-winged ships with mingled feelings of awe 
and wonder ; that they thought the men gods, and the 
ships huge birds gliding down from heaven, bearing upon 
their backs celestial beings, worthy of worship and hom- 
age ; that others, less reverent, feared that a huge sea- 
monster, during the night, had risen out of the sea, and 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 33 

vm waiting to obtain his morning repast from the 
natives thronging the shore. Whatever might have 
been their hopei and feelings, they were destined BOQO to 

see them fade away before (he Bg Q march of rapine 

and lust. The awe and admiration felt for and mani- 
fested toward the discoverers soon passed away. They 
were at length looked upon as human, and finally as 
fiends. Nothing would have been easier than to have 
exerted a happy influence over the untutored sav 
His tastes and habits made him a reverential being. 
Accustomed to behold the wildest tempests that ever 
swept across the ocean, or that desolate the land, he had 
seen in fancy a war-spirit ruling the winds and riding 
the crested wave. AVhen Columbus first appeared, richly 
attired, he was worshiped as a deity. It belonged to 
Columbus to point them away from himself, up to that 
God who had proclaimed Himself the brother of the 
whole human race, and the author of a common salvation 
to all the ends of the earth. It was an interesting mo- 
ment. The cross had been erected, for the first time, in 
the wilderness of America : and in the hour that wit- 
nessed this great re-union of mankind, it was befitting 
that other, higher and nobler themes should occupy the 
mind than gold. It was true that the morning mass was 
performed before the duties of the day were commenced, 
and the M Salve Begina," or Hymn to the Virgin, was 
sung at nightfall. Further than this, however, we are 
unable to find any evidence that religion exercised an 
influence over the conduct of those who o-athered around 
the cross. Priests were not wanting : but how different 
was the course pursued by them, and that which charac- 
terized Thomas Heriot, who first pointed the native of 
3 



34 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

North Carolina, away from himself to Jesus of Nazareth. 
The natives were not wanting in intellect, in honor, or 
in hospitality. When the winds and waves had driven 
a ship upon shore, threatening life, and destroying prop- 
erty, the natives turned out in scores to save the crew, 
and preserve their effects. When the white man had 
become entangled and lost in the wilds of the wilderness, 
the hut and the mattress gave him a shelter and a couch. 
If sick, he was cared for ; if hungry, he was fed ; and, 
when resuscitated in strength, he was led back again to 
the homes of his brethren. Land was given freely, and 
thirty-eight of the companions of Columbus, concluding 
to erect a fort, and remain in that land of gold and 
beauty, while the Admiral returned to Europe, to bear 
back the record of his success, the Indians cheerfully ren- 
dered assistance, and furnished them with food. Warlike 
tribes, living on the neighboring islands, were objects of 
dread. Columbus gave to the natives the assurance that 
if they would assist in erecting a fort, it should be for 
mutual defense. The fort was built, presenting an air 
of comfort that betokened the happiest auspices. The 
anchors were raised, the sails were filled, and back went 
the Admiral to the Old World, bearing with him, Indians, 
gold, and samples of the productions of the New. Europe 
was electrified with the marvelous results of the discovery, 
which, breaking upon the shores of Spain, were heralded 
from court to court, and kingdom to kingdom, filling all 
with rapture and surprise. He who had departed amid 
the sneers and imprecations of thousands, was now a hero. 
Bonfires, triumphal processions, arches festooned with 
garlands, and the road bestrewn with flowers, attested a 
people's joy ; while honors, little short of adoration, were 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 35 

loaded upon him by his lorereigns. Pomp and parade, 
grand receptions, epithets and titles were lavished upon 
him with a prodigal hand. He was declared Admiral, 
Governor, and Viceroy of the lands discovered, and of all 
those lands that should afterward be by him seen and 
explored. Not satisfied with his humble garb, he was 
ordered to assume the style as well as the title of nobility. 
Would that it were our's to revel longer in the brilliant 
sunshine that flooded, at this time, the Admiral's path. 
But such is not my province. It becomes my duty, 
henceforth, to describe, not to argue ; to relate facts, nut 
to sport in fancy sketching. It becomes my duty to 
begin with the prologue of that dark tragedy, played by 
Spanish Catholics, upon the theater of this Western 
World. The most unrestrained licentiousness having 
characterized the pale-faced strangers, the red man had 
learned to detest and loathe those whom he had formerly 
reverenced and worshiped. They had seen the Spaniard 
before the cross, with hands crossed in prayer ; they had 
heard him chaunt his orisons, and witnessed the perform- 
ance of his religious rites ; and, in mute astonishment, 
they had gazed upon them as they had plundered their 
homes, insulted their wives, enslaved their sons, and 
subjected their daughters to treatment which made their 
blood boil with rage, and drove them to redress their 
wrongs. 

The mountain crags are tinged by the flickering 
beams of the council fires. Around it maddened braves 
gather in despair. With sad forebodings they gaze 
upon the future, canvass its portending clouds, and be- 
wail its impending gloom. The white man's tread has 
been marked by blood, cruelty and wantonness. The 



36 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

heart, which had beat responsive to the touch of sympa- 
thy, now swells with hate. The bold chieftain leads the 
way. The full moon is sailing up the sky ; forest, ocean 
and plain are dancing in the moonlight. The songs of 
the night choristers are unheard by the cruel band, who 
have retired to deeds of shame. From mountain-crag to 
forest glade, the wild war-whoop is heard. The ram- 
parts are scaled, and thirty-eight desperadoes are wel- 
tering in gore. Priests and people are in eternity. 
The fort is razed from its foundations, and lies scattered 
over the plain. Again turn to a rejoicing band, singing 
their wild war-songs among the bleeding carcasses of 
the slain. The honor of their wives and daughters 
has been revenged. No white man shall look again 
with lustful eye upon the form of the Indian maid. 
Days, weeks and months glide away. The Indian is 
happy; his home is dear to him. The fish that swim 
the sea, or sport in the murmuring brook, administer 
to his wants. 

The scene again changes. The white men have 
returned. The morning and evening prayer is again 
heard. Columbus is again leading in his train a band 
of freebooters. The fires of persecution are rekindled, 
which in time surround the race. Their dreams burst 
like air-bubbles. Fears take possession of their souls. 
They see their idols trampled into the dust; their 
homes again are pillaged; their hunting-grounds are 
converted into hostile fields, where they, in turn, are 
hunted and enslaved. Columbus perceives the sad 
reality that meets his view, as slowly the curtain rises 
which concealed the fortunes of those who had been left 
behind, to find in the wilderness a grave. He discovers 



IN" AMERICAN HISTORY. 37 

that they bad given provocation to the natives by their 
rapacity and licentiousness. Thoughts of revenge are 
held in subservience to deeper plans. The priests who 
have returned with him begin their work. Far off in 
the mountains of the interior the cross is upreared, and 
thirteen Indian converts proclaim their faithfuli. 
A chapel is erected within the fort at Isabella ; in the 

rer of it is huim- a bell that calls the flock together 
at morn and even. Caonavo. a pro 1 . \irlike chief- 

tain, who had long looked with distrust npCB the course 
pursued by the invaders, now that they had come within 
his territory, and erected a fort, as if to defy his people, 
meditated deep and lasting revenge. He lived in Xar- 
aguay, the loveliest portion of the land. His wife was 
distinguished for her beauty, his people fur their bravery. 
Columbus had come empowered to rule the discovered 
lands, to collect tribute, to work the mines, and to en- 
slave the race. Caonavo had been requ provide 
his tribute. Gi-old he had not : he offered the products 
of the soil, and these were spurned. Persecution was 
attempted. The hero and martyr of Haytien liberty 
called around him the warriors of his race, and advised 
them to repeat the tragedy before described. He led 
against the fort eight thousand followers, and labored 
hard to conquer, but in vain. Alonzo de Ojeda was com- 
mander of the garrison. He had fought upon the plains 
of Egypt, and knew well the artifices of the rider of 
the desert. Caonavo retired, but not to rest. Xo 
Spaniard was safe alone. A deep, settled hatred took 
possession of the race, and they were prepared, with 
Caonavo at their head, to die, but never to bow to slavery. 

At length Ojeda promised to bring the captive, bound 



38 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

to Columbus, who was confined to his couch by sickness. 
This exploit, as related by Irving, is thrilling with in- 
terest, and wild with romance. Ojeda penetrated the 
forest, swam rivers, scaled mountains, and reached the 
warrior's home, which was surrounded by plenty, and 
hung with trophies. Days were passed together. At 
length he invited the royal chieftain to accompany him to 
his home, and promised him the bell that was believed 
able to converse. The prize was too glittering to be with- 
stood, and the chief consented to accompany him to the 
fort. The morning came for the journey, and Ojeda 
beheld warriors to the number of several thousands 
ready to accompany him. Ojeda objected to this in 
vain. They started. After pursuing their course for 
a time, Ojeda presented a specimen of jewelry often 
used in courts, and frequently worn by crowned heads 
or nobles. These he promised the chief that he should 
wear, as well as ride his horse, if he would bathe in the 
neighboring brook. The bargain was instantly closed. 
He repaired to the river, and having been assisted upon 
the horse, the jewelry — which proved to be shackles — 
was adjusted, and the chief, arrayed in royal ornaments, 
was the admiration of his followers. Ojeda now made 
several circuits to gain space, followed by his little 
band of horsemen, the Indians constantly shrinking 
back from the prancing steeds. At length, making a 
wide sweep into the forest, he evaded the army, and, 
after surmounting obstacles and encountering perils of 
various kinds — after toiling through deep-tangled forests 
and clambering over rocky and high mountains — he 
entered Isabella in triumph, with his wild Indian 
bound behind him. 



IX AMERICAN HISTORY. 39 

The haughty Carib met Columbus with a lofty and 
unsubdued air. Disdaining to conciliate by submission, 
he would not bow his spirit though a captive. For 
years he was confined in chains in the aparimentfl of the 
Admiral, yet he never treated Columbus with respect, 
or even with a recognition ; while he admired the heroic 
prowess of Ojeda, and always rose when he entered. 
At length he was shipped for Spain. This killed him. 
Caonavo, broken in spirit, died on the voyage, and 
received an ocean burial. The Islanders rose in arras. 
Dangers thickened about the colony; gloom hung over 
and shrouded their hopes in a pall dark and threaten- 
ing. Friar Boyle, the first priest who had come with 
tin's colony, became a leading agitator. Margarite, his 
ally, accompanied by a band of malcontents, had taken 
possession of some ships lying in the harbor, and had 
returned to Spain — the first general and apostle of the 
New World, thus setting the flagrant example of unau- 
thorized abandonment of their posts. 

Thus, while malicious and designing foes were under- 
mining the reputation and blasting the prospects of 
Columbus at home, a plotting enemy was astir, disturb- 
ing his peace, threatening the cherished hopes of the 
colony. Columbus left Spain, prepared to defend and 
promote the interests of the crown. What was his 
outfit ? What were the designs he formed for a friendly 
race, who had shared with him their food and raiment? 
Did the priests bring Bibles? Did Columbus bring 
implements of agriculture, that he might civilize the 
natives? Did he come prepared to educate them in the 
arts of peace, and teach them the fundamental princi- 
ples of the Christian faith, viz : a wide good will to all ? 



40 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

Came he to convert their rural haunts into cottages, 
their hunting grounds into fertile fields? No! He 
came with guns, horses, crossbows, bucklers and blood- 
hounds ; these were the implements of civilization. He 
brought w r hips, pick-axes and shovels for the mines ; 
these were the tools for industrious toil. He came to 
enslave, not to civilize ; he came to butcher, not to pro- 
tect. He argues in vain, who tries to prove the natives 
the aggressors. The Admiral left the island a friend 
to all. The natives idolized him, and had proven 
themselves worthy of trust and friendship ; and, igno- 
rant of what was transpiring beyond the sea, sentence 
of subjugation had been pronounced against them. It 
was not to avenge injury, for he was ignorant of any 
committed ; it was not for protection, for the natives 
had shown themselves peaceable and kind. He came 
to prosecute a most unrighteous purpose by the most 
inhuman means. 

Let us return to the Missionary station in the moun- 
tains. There, too, is riot, rebellion and bloodshed. The 
missionaries are flying from their posts ; the chapel is 
destroyed, the images are broken into fragments, and 
the cross is buried beneath a pile of rubbish and burnt. 
What is the cause ? Among the missionaries who had 
accompanied Friar Boyle, were Eoman Pane, a poor her- 
mit, and Juan Borgonon, a Franciscan monk. They had 
resided for some time among the Indians of the Boyal 
Plain, strenuously endeavoring to make converts, and 
had succeeded, says Martyn, with one family of sixteen 
persons. The conversion of the Cacique, however, was 
their main object. The extent of his possessions made 
his conversion of great importance to the interests of the 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 41 

colony, and was considered by the zealous fathers a 
means of bringing his numerous subjects under the 
dominion of the church. For some time he lent a wil- 
ling ear; he learned the Pater Neater, the Aw Maria, 
and the creed, and made the whole family repeat them 
daily. At length his favorite wife was seduced, or 
treated with outrage, by a Spaniard of authority. The 
Cacique renounced his religion, which as he supposed 
admitted of such atrocities. The missionaries, perceiving 
that their labors for advancing the interests of the church 
would be no longer of avail at this point, departed, lead- 
ing with them Juan Mateo, the Indian convert. Scarcely 
had they departed, when several Indians entered the 
chapel, broke the images in pieces, trampled them under 
foot, and buried them in a neighboring field. It was a 
period of groat rigor in ecclesiastical law, especially 
among the Spaniards. In Spain the Inquisition was 
performing its mission. All heresies in religion, all 
recantations of faith, and all acta of sacrilege committed 
either by Jew, Moor, or Indian, were punished with tire 
and faggot. The Indians, exasperated by the crimes of 
the Spaniards, knew no bounds in their hostility toward 
the soldior or priest. A spirit of discontent characterized 
all : for the vile passions of the white man had converted 
this smiling garden of the ocean into a battlefield, and 
had transformed this hospitable people into Bayage and 
desperate warriors. The passion of revenge had been 
roused. Wherever the smoke of an Indian town rose 
from among the trees, it marked the spot where a horde 
of exasperated enemies were congregated: while the 
deep, rich forests swarmed with prowling savages. 
Against these Columbus led mounted cavalrv, armed 
4 



42 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

footmen, and blood-thirsty dogs. The Indians, unpro- 
tected by armor, and without instruments of defense — 
wholly unacquainted with the* use or clanger arising from 
fire-arms — fled at once. Thus was an advantage easily 
gained by the dogs and Spaniards. They used it like 
furies. Thousands were slain ; the captured were either 
sent to the mines, or shipped for Europe as slaves. The 
Islanders, despairing of victory, abandoned their fields 
and homes, and fled to the mountains, hoping to starve 
out their oppressors. The attempt was a vain one. The 
sea furnished the Spaniards with fish, and their vessels 
enabled them to procure food from the neighboring 
islands. The natives, subsisting upon roots and such 
game as they chanced to find, perished by scores. A 
third part of the population were said to have fallen vic- 
tims to famine, and the remainder, driven by starvation, 
returned to bondage. This was the initiatory step in the 
subjugation of this people, taken by Catholic Spain, and 
carried out by Catholic ministers and soldiers. Within 
three years from the discovery, these acts were performed 
which scattered a happy race, dispelled their happiness, 
and destroyed their freedom. 

The tale of their woes reached the ear of Isabella. 
Columbus was recalled, and in the year 1500 Francisco 
Bobadilla was made Governor General of the Indies. He 
w r as empowered to examine into the charges and repre- 
sentations brought against the Admiral at the Court of 
Spain. He was commanded to liberate the captives, and 
look after their spiritual interests. Columbus and his 
brethren were sent home in chains. Large grants, and 
new privileges were conferred upon the proprietaries, 
and greater burdens were placed upon the natives. The 



TN AMERICAN HISTORY. 43 

duties payable to the crown were reduced, to encourage 
the working of the mines ; and that the revenue might 
remain undiminished, instead <rf liberating the natives, as 
ordered in his instructions, muster-rolls were made out, 
and the inhabitants were divided into districts or classes, 
the distribution being made according to the value of the 
mines. All able to labor Merc impressed, and the proud 
warrior, whose hand was unused to toil, was forced to lay 
down the bow, and take up the spade. Their fields 
were negleeted ; their villages were deserted ; the whole 
population was reduced to bondage. By these means 
Bobadilla, in a few months, drew from the mines gold 
sufficient to reimburse Spain all the expenses of the dis- 
covery. The result may easily be anticipated. Their 
spiritual interests were neglected. Unaccustomed to ■ 
life of hardship, and possessed of a nature that scorns 
servitude, the proud spirit of the son of the forest bent, 
and finally broke and gave way, under the oppression 
and tyranny of the Spanish rule. A frightful mortality 
ensues, that threatens their entire extinction. Again 
some disaffected Spaniard bears to the ear of Isabella, a 
description of the cruelties inflicted upon the helpless 
and innocent. 

Another change takes place. Bobadilla is recalled to 
Spain, not to make atonement for disregarding the in- 
structions of his Queen — not to suffer the chagrin of a 
trial, or a reprimand — but to revel in luxury — to riot, 
by means of his ill-gotten gains — to revel in pleasure, 
and enjoy the honors of a place at Court, as another 
professed Christian goes to take his place. 

Don Nicolas Ovando, of the Order of Alcantra, is sent 
out, with instructions still more explicit and direct. M No 



44 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

exaction shall be made, farther than the tribute which 
had been imposed upon all, and no Indians shall be com- 
pelled to labor in the mines." It belongs to him to 
proclaim liberty to the captive, and to let the oppressed 
go free. But Ovando either evaded or disobeyed his 
instructions, and, as though tyranny was inherent with 
the office, he proved himself to be one of the most exe- 
crable task-masters that ever swayed a sceptre, or ruled 
a province. That he might pave the way for carrying 
out his nefarious plans, he called a general assembly of 
the Caciques, made a proclamation corresponding to his 
instructions, removed the yoke of their servitude, and 
permitted the worn-out slave to lay down his implements 
of toil, and seek his home. At the same time he made 
use of persuasion, and proffers of friendship and reward, 
to supply the mines with laborers. 

His protestations and rewards were alike in vain. 
The impression made upon their minds by past suffering 
and present want, as it was communicated from heart 
to heart, was overpowering. The mines were closed. 
Multitudes came forth from the underground vaults as 
ghosts from a sepulchre. The bent form, weakened by 
close confinement — the haggard countenance, and lan- 
guid step — the despair pictured upon every face — told 
the story of their griefs, and caused tumultuous feelings 
of rage and contempt to mingle with their sighs for free- 
dom, which, swelling to a torrent, swept away every 
barrier that obstructed their passage to a land of rest. 

Change had been working with busy fingers, amid 
their fields and hearths. They knew not the land. 
Unnumbered victims of persecution met the wander- 
er's eye at every advancing step. New made mounds 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 45 

dotted the plain, and the dead and dying lined the war- 
path. They had been called, in the haze of the morn- 
ing, from their earthy couch to attend mass, and listen to 
the blasphemous petitions of a so-called priesthood. 
From thence driven to the mines, they saw the black 
robed friar lay down hi3 prayer book and take up the 
scourge. Those who had been chanting their orisons 
were now either dragging out from the pit a corpse, to 
make way for another victim ready to take his place, 
having just been driven in from some quiet retreat by 
the aid of the blood hound and dashing cavalier, or else 
they were planning new hardships for the unfortunate 
and despairing. He had seen the graws of his fathers 
disturbed by the same sacrilegious hand whose ruthless 
grasp had seized objects dear ai life to him, and com- 
pelled the wife of his bosom or the daughter of his hope, 
to gratify the appetites and passions of a licentious sol- 
diery. Such was their condition when freedom came. 
They left the chapel, the tent and the slave-driver, and 
sought their green fields, quiet woods, and murmuring 
brooks, on the shore of the broad blue ocean, and were 
healing their wounds, resting their frames, and recruit- 
ing their strength. Shunning the saint as though he 
were a pestilence, the Indian no longer celebrated the 
mass, but threw away the image of the Virgin, and 
turned his thoughts toward the o;ods of his fathers. 
Ovando at once perceived the result. Poverty or labor 
awaited the Spaniard; freedom and happiness were be- 
ing enjoyed by the Indian. The course pursued by 
Ovando is sickening to relate, and would surpass belief, 
were we reciting the deeds of anv but Jesuits and those 
controlled bv them. 



46 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

Representations were made to the Court, setting forth, 
in strong colors, the natural levity and inconstancy of 
the Indians, and making their idle and disorderly man- 
ner of living, now that they were free, the means hy 
which new shackles were to be forged. At this distant 
day it is impossible to read this letter of Ovando to his 
sovereign without feelings of loathing and disgust. 
How a man, whose eye had witnessed the sufferings of 
a persecuted people — whose ear had listened to their 
groans — whose heart, unless made of adamant, must 
have experienced sensations of pleasure at the swell 
of joy that rose from the liberated bondsmen — could 
then write a petition to have them again reduced to 
servitude, knowing that such a measure would extir- 
pate the race, seems surprising. It required a man to 
perform this deed, who had beheld the victim upon the 
rack in the cellars of the Inquisition. No other could 
have made their idleness and levity a source of regret. 
The Indian, sore in limb, and weak in frame, was un- 
fitted for toil ; and it seems strange that hearts so long 
depressed with grief, and limbs so long accustomed to 
the chain and the lash, could again move in the dance, 
or join in the song. It was the joy consequent upon 
their release. Ovando contended that moderate toil 
would be for their improvement, and would enable them 
to pay their tribute, and save them from becoming an 
expense to the colony. What had they to do with the 
colony? Born free, they were unacquainted with labor, 
and ignorant of suffering. But this was not the end 
of this dark chapter. He added, that the Indians, being 
left to themselves, kept aloof from the Spaniards, which 
rendered it impossible to instruct them in the principles 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 47 

of Christianity. This was true: they kept away from 
the Spaniard, both soldier and priest, for the same rea- 
son that tli cation tak _ ? in the 
a of mountains, or the hound-chased slave flies 
to a land of freedom. 1 : t the mass they evaded, 
but the lash; not the prayer-book, but the spade; not 
the admonition of a faithful cler^v, but the fans: of 
the thirsty blood-hound. 

The reasoning convinced the Court, and their reply 
came, recommending M that if il pry to oblige 

the Indians to work, it should 1*> done in the most gen- 
tle and moderate manner: that the Caciques should be 
hinted to send their people in regular turns, and that 
the employers should treat them well, and pay them 
wmgQfl according to the quality of th I nature 

of the labor: that care should be taken for their i- 
lar attendance upon religious worship and instruction: 
tod that it should be remembered that they were a free 
people, to be governed with mildness, and on no account 
to be treated M slav 

Thus released from all restrictions, with a noble 
Queen relying upon his honor, he had been successful 
in concealing the dart aimed at the heart of a weak and 
impoverished people. Beneath the cloak of Christianity, 
and by pretending to regard the interests of their spir- 
itual wants, he had entailed upon them a curse which 
swept them, as a nation, from the land: and. though 
reminded of their freedom, still, like his pred; 
with a heart steeled against sympathy and the influences 
of an enlightened conscience, wanting in every attribute 
that marks the Christian, he trampled upon the instruc- 
tions, reproduced the chains and lash, and hurled the 



48 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

race again into a bondage worse than death. No more 
does the Indian breathe free air; henceforth he lives 
and dies a slave. A writing called an encomiendas, was 
made out, which represented the employers as the pat- 
rons of the oppressed. It read as follows: "I recom- 
mend to A. B. such and such Indians, enlisted by name, 
the subjects of such a cacique ; and he is to take care 
to have them instructed in the principles of our holy 
faith." Oh! that word holy belies the faith. Faith! 
it smells of gold — whether it be examined in Hayti, 
in China, or in Eome. But such was the pretended 
design, by which the Indians were made again to rally 
round the cross — rather by which they were torn from 
their homes and altars to labor in the cold, damp mines, 
uncheered by sunlight, and without one single star of 
hope to illumine the night of their dark despair. For 
six months together were they kept by their employers 
under ground, without being permitted to roam the 
woods, to swim the rivers, or commune with their kin- 
dred. As might have been expected, from the labor 
and grief at being again doomed to slavery, they sank 
so rapidly that it suggested to the proprietors of the 
mines the having recourse to Africa for slaves ; for the 
island was fast becoming a desert. The bones of thou- 
sands were bleaching in the dew, or whitening beneath 
a tropic sun. The wail of the bereaved and affrighted 
reached the ear of the neighboring natives, and called 
loudly for vengeance. A descendant of the noble Caon- 
avo still ruled Xaragua. She was a woman beautiful 
in person, proud in spirit, and if she had a fault, it was 
that she loved her race, and dared to vindicate their 
cause. Royal blood flowed in her veins and warmed her 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 49 

heart. Her home was situated upon the brow of a hill 
that overlooked the silver waters of a lake. Her war- 
rior tribe shared her pleasures, administered to her 
wants. The tale of suffering had reached her ear. It 
was night. The moon lit up the heavens, and reflected 
its rays upon the shining waters that lay sleeping at 
their feet. The camp was in motion. A handful of 
faggots were lighted and thrown before her tent. The 
nobles of the land drew around the fire and listened to 
this beautiful woman, as she recounted the sufferings 
of their brethren. For a moment their hearts were soft- 
ened ; but, like the faggots before them, they were soon 
to be consumed by the fire of persecution which was rag- 
ing furiously in the distance. Higue had been depopu- 
lated by the dogs of war, and Ovando swore that Xara- 
gua should follow in its train. Putting himself at the 
head of three hundred and seventy followers, he de- 
clared that Xaragua should be stripped of its warriors, 
who threatened to avenge their brethren's wrongs. He 
left San Domingo, professedly to collect tribute, and 
pay this Queen a visit. The Princess heard of his deci- 
sion, but she read the signs of the times, and appre- 
hended her fate. The warriors, seeing that defense 
was of no avail, prepared the require tribute, and 
formed the resolution to receive the commander courte- 
ously, hoping thereby to save themselves from destruc- 
tion. The Queen welcomed the commander as became 
her rank, and treated him as a king. After several 
days of feasting and pleasure, Ovando, professing to 
regard the Queen as a friend and ally, invited her and 
her. friends to an entertainment, which he promised 
them, after the manner of Spain. A large building 
5 



50 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

was prepared ; an immense concourse of Indians, be- 
sides the invited guests, gathered around to enjoy the 
spectacle. The Queen, surrounded by her nobles, was 
assigned the center. At the appointed hour the cavalry 
rode up, headed by Ovando, and took possession of every 
avenue to the building. With admiration the Queen 
and people gazed upon the commander, mounted upon 
his gay and brilliantly equipped charger. Shouts of 
applause rent the air. Ovando placed his hand upon 
the cross. The cavalry, thirsting for blood, rushed upon 
the defenseless crowd, slaughtered them until they 
wearied in the sport, and then loosed the blood-hounds, 
fired the building, and rested from their labors. The 
Queen was borne a captive to the camp, and, after a 
mock trial, was put to death. 

This is but another instance that dots the page of 
Spanish perfidy and Catholic rule. Here was a man, 
who was the head of a distinguished order that belongs 
to the church of Eome, with a character black as Egyp- 
tian darkness, leading a life of cruelty and bloodshed 
that would disgrace a cannibal. Would that there were 
palliating circumstances to be found in the annals or 
records of this gloomy period ; but he who searches 
history for them, looks in vain. Why can we not find 
priests rising up and calling down the imprecations of 
the Word of God, and the vengeance of heaven, to rest 
upon the heads of those who dare, despite the instruc- 
tions and the remonstrances of an indulgent Queen, 
pursue this fiendish course ? We find instances where 
the priests instigated suits against the unhappy natives, 
for treating coldly, and perhaps harshly, the holy faith — 
instances where they advised torture and burning, but 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 51 

none of the opposite character, save those of Las Casas, 
meets the eye or cheers the heart. This noble man, at 
the foot of the throne, plead the Indian cause. He 
remonstrated with the white man, and sympathised with 
the Indian ; hut with no avail. He taught the Pater 
Noster, and sung the evening chaunt. The Indian 
cared not for creeds; he wanted freedom; he desired 
freedom here, without suffering, and preferred the hunt- 
ing grounds to the church. Religion, preached by such 
men, is a mockery. " By their fruits ye shall know 
them," taught the Saviour; and by their fruits we judge 
of Catholic rule and Catholic missions. The Gospel 
teaches a doctrine that sets the captive free ; it removes 
the burdens from the oppressed ; it binds up the bleeding 
wounds, pours the oil of consolation into the bruised 
spirit ; it rejoices in prosperity, in happiness and hope. 
And still, with this bloody record of inflicted tortures 
and heart-breaking woes, Archbishop Hughes prates of 
Catholic philanthropy, patriotism, and the holy faith, 
of which Ovando spoke. The Saviour, when upon earth, 
pronounced a wo against certain wise Pharisees ; for, 
said he, " ye load men with burdens grievous to be 
borne, while ye yourselves would not touch them with 
one of your fingers." 

From whence came these purposes that stimulated 
Ovando? Were they not the productions of a depraved 
and corrupt heart? Was there any cause to prompt 
this illiberal and anti-Christian as well as anti-human 
course ? Gold was the shrine before which they wor- 
shiped, upon which millions of victims were immolated. 
Covetousness of the attainment of power ever has been, 
and probably ever will be, a predominant characteristic 



52 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

of the Romish Church. It is this principle that is now 
at work in Europe and in America. Dressed in a 
thousand different forms, it has rode the popular wave, 
and ruled the storm. It was this principle that made 
the scenes before described but the twilight to that 
midnight gloom that afterward enveloped the Indies in 
its sable folds. 

Isabella, the noblest and purest of Castilian Queens, 
died in 1505. Her dying request was that Ovando 
should be recalled. Her last prayer was offered in 
behalf of the unfortunate and the doomed. The bell 
that tolled the knell of her departure, joined its echo 
with the music of the beating wave that broke upon a 
distant island, and sung the requiem over the grave of 
Indian hope. The shadow of a starless night was 
thrown over the path in which they journeyed on to 
death. The tempest that was to break forth upon them 
had but yet sounded its alarm. Ferdinand loved gold, 
and disregarded life. Desirous of power, he cared not 
how it was gained. He derided and stigmatized those, 
as weak and imbecile, who preferred moral considera- 
tions to power ; and laughed at the idea of converting a 
race who had been useful in replenishing his treasury, 
and might still do more. To abuse the native, became 
the surest road to fortune and power. The hours of 
labor were limited only by the strength of the victim's 
frame and the slave-driver's arm. Was the Indian 
baptized, it was that a tax might be raised for the 
crown. This paid, and the employers might ply the 
lash, and drive on the despairing to the gate of death, 
and here alone the Indian found emancipation. I 
rejoice that God rules the hosts of heaven ; for if power 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 53 

was there delegated to the Pope, and I should be com- 
pelled to live forever under his sway, hell would be a 
release. History tells us that the natives were fre- 
quently coupled and harnessed together like cattle, and 
driven with whips. If they fell under the load, they 
were flogged up. To prevent their taking refuge in the 
woods or mountains, an officer was constantly on the 
watch, with blood-hounds, and he who fled from slavery 
rushed into the jaws of merciless beasts that were fat- 
tened on human flesh. It would seem that the discovery 
of America had enthroned upon the altar of the 
Spaniard's heart, gold for a God, and that human 
sacrifices were all that could appease the divinity's 
wrath; for, by an enumeration made in 1507, the 
number of natives upon the island of Hayti was but 
60,000 — the remains of a population, which, fifteen 
years before, had exceeded a million of human beings. 
Death rode a fleet courser, and his arrows sped in 
showers. Famine and disease, occasioned by their 
hardships and intercourse with Europeans, completed 
the desolation of the island. The mines were closed for 
want of laborers. The Spaniards, being thus deprived 
of instruments to carry on their improvements, again 
resorted to the cloak of Christian charity, covered by 
which, they carried their engine of destruction into 
other islands. They represented the immense benefit 
that would accrue to the holy faith, could the inhabitants 
of the Lucayo islands be transported to Hispaniola, 
where they might be civilized with more facility, and 
instructed with greater advantage in the Christian 
religion. " Several vessels were fitted out for the 
Lucayos, the commander of which informed the natives 



54 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

that they came from a delicious country, in which the 
departed ancestors of the Indians resided, by whom they 
were sent to invite their descendants to resort thither, 
to partake of the bliss enjoyed there by happy spirits 
in the Elysian Paradise. By this artifice above forty 
thousand were decoyed into Hispaniola, to share in the 
common sufferings of their race, by mingling their 
groans and tears with the wretched living, or by 
following to a common tomb the unfortunate dead/' 
When this hypocrisy and deception failed, then were 
the natives dragged from their homes to eke out a 
miserable existence in the mines and among the graves 
of their brethren, until the Lucayo islands were depopu- 
lated. Other islands suffered the same impositions, 
and shared the same cruel fate. In 1509, Ovando was 
recalled, and Don Diego Columbus was appointed, who 
followed the same path, and reached a like goal. In 
1511, the conquest of Cuba was undertaken and com- 
pleted. Three hundred Spanish missionaries of the 
cross embarked from San Domingo, to convert the 
untutored savage, and subjugate the island. They 
landed in Cuba, without opposition from the natives, 
and in a few days surprised and captured the principal 
cacique, Hatuey, and made him expiate in the flames the 
fault he had been guilty of, in not submitting with a 
good grace to the doctrines taught by these evangelists. 
This cacique, when at the stake, being importuned by 
a priest to become a Christian, that he might go to 
heaven, replied that, " if any Spaniard was to be met 
in heaven, he hoped not to go there ." 

In 1514, the number of inhabitants of Hayti was 
reckoned at 14,000 — the remains of a proud, free race. 



IX AMERICAN HISTORY. 

Facts like these are more eloquent than words. Words 
die, but tacts live. and. to the remotest age. he who 
reaas the hii this bloody time and the untimely 

gra _ will not cease to hold in 

det« that race and that nation, who for gold pur- 

I a course that men ry patriot, 

the pity of every t u and the contempt of alL 

this time, the Dominican friars inveighed against 
the Itepartimentas. L; i was their leader, who 

won for himself the proud title of the " protector of the 
[ndi But his labors vera ineffectual. The In- 

dians still sank into the arms of death, until among the 
native islanders there sprung up one who had the cour- 
age to put himself at the he is countrymen — who 
erected the standard of revolt — who gathered around 
him the Indian and African, withdrew them from the 
B iniah gripe, and led them on to The Con- 
quest of Mexico had commenced. The troops were 
many of them drawn off. and the cacique, who had been 
christened Henriquez. who had been educated in a 
vent of the Franciscans, defended his retreat in the 
mountains with such skill and prowess that he defeated 
the Spanish troops, inspired courage into his follow 
encouraged more of his countrymen to escape, who. with 
the Africans flocking to his standard, enabled him to 
preserve his independence. During this time the c; 
tion of the propriety of keeping the natives in slavery 
underwent grave examination. The experiment 
tried to allow them to take care of themselves : but 
3] inish histories relate that they proved so improvident 
that the encoinien.i e pronounced neces- 
their preservation. What a mockery ! Before the 



56 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

Spaniards discovered the island, the natives of Hayti 
showed they needed not the protection of their oppress- 
ors ; and now that Don Henriquez led them on to victory, 
they evidenced their contempt for and disgust of a for- 
eign rule. I will close this history with one remark : 
it is written that cattle having become plentiful, the 
Indians were no longer compelled to bear burdens. 

The first chapter of Spanish civilization and Catholic 
missions has been completed. I have not embellished 
facts. I have not written anything that does not form 
a component part of history. I would refer those who 
doubt the authenticity of these statements, to " The 
History of the Buccaneers in America," by James 
Burney, F. E. S. ; to Irving's Columbus, Graham's and 
Bobertson's Histories of America, Las Casas* works, &c. 

Perhaps the inquiry has been raised, why lay all 
these charges at the door of the Catholic faith? I 
would gladly have found some precedents by which I 
might have reached a different conclusion. Blot from 
the historic page the story of the Spanish conquests, of 
Ferdinand De Soto's bloody march from Florida to the 
Mississippi — tear from the record of the past the fact 
that Pizarro pillaged the Temple of the Sun, broke 
into fragments venerated idols, tore down their sacred 
shrines, and oppressed and enslaved the ingenuous, 
high-minded sons of Peru ; or that Cortes, trampling 
upon every right, and disregarding every generous 
feeling and impulse, had converted the halls of the 
Montezumas into one great slaughter-house, where the 
innocent were compelled to fall victims to the caprices 
and whims of this dark, benighted emissary of a 
corrupt faith — and I might be convinced of an error. 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. Off 

But, finding such facts established beyond the reach of 
controversy, I am compelled to admit, upon the best of 
evidence, that those who have marched under the ban- 
ner of the cross in this New World, have had gain for 
their pursuit, gold for a God, and hearts black and 
festering with corruption, to lead them on in that path 
whore every step has been marked by blood, every act 
by crime, and every thought by treachery and deceit. 
Were it not that Ireland is in rags — that nation through 
whose veins courses the purest of blood, whose heart 
beats in sympathy with humanity, whose past is so 
glorious, whose ancestry so illustrious — were it not that 
Ireland, once the Athens of Great Britain, to-day re- 
sembles Hayti in its grave — were it not that Italy is 
in bondage, that France is drunk with Popish wine — I 
might believe that Catholicism had nothing to do with 
the slavery and degradation of the West Indies, of 
Mexico and South America — in tine, of every land upjn 
which the shadow of the cross rests like a curse, or where 
the fuct of a priest imprints upon the front of national 
prosperity the mark of Cain and the touch of decay. 

Cuba and Hayti are not the beauteous islands of 
other and brighter days — of days when the red man 
built his camp-fires upon her mountains, or made her 
valleys echo back the wild notes of his war-whoop, and 
the melody of the dance. Those islands, that do: 
o;loriouslv the sea, the music of whose beating serf we 
can almost hear, are but the air-bubbles of golden Cas- 
tilian dreams, which are fast preparing for an explosion 
that shall dissolve into thin air the hopes and cherished 
theories of ages. Those islands resemble some old 
grave-yard gone into decay, now and then visited by 



58 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

the mournful and reflecting, who, desiring to sit down 
beneath the shadowy memories of the past, seek solitude 
and seclusion, where nature is full of the penciled 
beauties of the long ago, but is without life or bustle, 
fashion or business ; or rather they seem like some old 
abbey or castle — grey, frosted with age, and trembling 
with decay, upon whose mouldering piles rests the 
shivered and distorted imagery of genius and toil. 
Her mountains are covered with verdure ; but over her 
marts of commerce the creeping ivy has grown, and 
places, once the haunts of industry, are now filled with 
rubbish. No swarming bands of natives greet the eye, 
as you approach her shores ; and he who wanders among 
her valleys, and sits down beneath the shadow of her 
mountains, once redolent with light, and alive with 
warriors, feels 

" Like one who treads alone some banquet hall deserted ; M 

for those neat little Indian villages that dotted the 
forests, sw^arming with an innocent and happy popula- 
tion, have disappeared, and in their stead you find huts 
of indigent, imbecile Spaniards, buried in the universal 
gloom. The decayed and deserted ruins of Isabella, as 
over them the owl sings her te-whit, te-whoo, unscared, 
have become objects of awe and superstition ; while the 
chime of the vesper-bell, the flowing robes of priests, 
hooded and thick-veiled nuns, moving among a beggared 
population, points a significant finger across the sea to- 
ward Rome. As surely as the needle turns to the pole, 
and with the certainty of one who judges of the fountain 
by the rill that flows from it, may we ascribe the con- 
dition of all the Spanish possessions to the influence 
exerted over them by the Roman faith. 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 59 



CHAPTER III. 

THE CONQUEST OF MEXICO AND PERU. 

Cortez — His Character — Montezuma — The Characteristics of the 
Mexicans — Scenes in the Conquest — The overthrow of the Mexi- 
can and commencement of the Spanish rule — Peru — Its conquest 
by Pizarro — The results — Influence of the Jesuits. 

The last chapter marks a new era in the history of 
Catholicism in America. The Indian race that peopled 
the islands had disappeared before the onward march of 
cruelty and bloodshed. Las Casas, to preserve the rem- 
nant of this race, prevailed upon his sovereign to plant 
slavery upon the islands. A continent, stretching from 
the northern polar circle to a high southern latitude, 
above fifteen hundred miles beyond the furthest extrem- 
ity of the Old World, presented at once a range for 
thought, a field for conjecture, and an object for specu- 
lation, that startled Europe from a lethargic slumber, 
and bade her sons go forth in quest of the marvelous and 
the real. Theories vanished before facts, dreams were 
eclipsed by realities, and hopes were oft-times more than 
realized. Explorers by sea and land rivaled each other 
in discoveries. They saw nature carrying on her opera- 
tions upon a larger scale, and with a bolder hand. A 
peculiar magnificence enveloped everything with its 
charms. America was found to be not only remarkable 
for its magnitude, position, and mineral wealth, but for 
the sublimity and grandeur of its scenery. Loftier 



60 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

mountains cast their shadows upon more fertile plains, 
and Europe was outdone in lakes and rivers, in climate 
and productions. The plain of Quito, which is but the 
base of sky -piercing peaks, is higher above the sea than 
the top of the Pyrenees ; while the stupendous ridge of 
the Andes, whose bold, bare fronts, though exposed to 
the rays of a tropical sun, are frosted with eternal snow, 
beneath which storms and tempests roll in gloomy gran- 
deur, and thunderbolts spend their force and fall harm- 
less at their base ; yet these are no less remarkable for 
elevation than extent, though they lift themselves up 
into air above the peak of Teneriffe, the highest land 
upon the Eastern Hemisphere. There was music in 
America, sung by different voices, and poetry written as 
by inspired bards. The melody of the waters, with 
Niagara thundering forth her deep-toned bass — the 
distant echo of ocean-waves beating their tenor strain 
upon either shore — the softer alto of the sweet-toned 
choir of the lakes, harmonizing well with the second 
played by numerous rivers, as, murmuring their plain- 
tive music, they press forward to their ocean-home — 
prairies that sweep off interminably, covered with a lux- 
uriant vegetation, waving a good-by to the evening gale 
that bows the necks of mighty forests — mountain and 
vale, forest, river and lake, tinged with the golden light 
of wigwam-fires — war-whoops and festive dances, happy 
homes and glowing altars, mighty cities, and swarming 
millions — made discoverers fanatical, and enthusiasts 
of alL 

And still, when everything was so well calculated to 
widen and expand the views of man, to untie the bonds 
of prejudice, and fill the heart of the beholder with praise, 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 61 

find Catholicism trailing her slimy length along these 
plains, over these mountains, swimming these la" 
rivers and seas — thirsting for human blood — gloating 
upon human ilesh — hunting gold in the temple, on the 
altar, by the road-side, and within the sacred precincts of 
tike family circle. In the year 1510, Fernando Cortez, 
then twenty-four years of age, a man possessed of talent, 
reli^ rhusiasm, a love of gold, and a reck" 

of purpose that rendered hini equal to any undertaking, 
set sail from Cuba, to make war upon a monarch wi 
dominions were more extensive than all the kingdoms 
subject to Spain. "A jus enthusiasm always 

mingled with the spirit of adventure in the New World. 
and ; by a combination still more strange, united with 
avarice in prompting the Spaniards to all their enter- 
prises, a large cross was displayed in their standards, 
with the inscription, * Let ws follow the cross, for wider 
Am sign shall we conquer.* n 

The history of the conquest of Mexico is but a repeti- 
tion of the course pursued by the Spaniards on the islands 
of Cuba and Hayti. Priests were among the prime 
movers of the expedition, which had the securing of gold 
for its chief object. It was to the cunning and Jesuitism 
of priests that Cortez was indebted for his life and fame. 
A traitor to his country, he would never have succeeded 
in freeing himself from the vigilant eye of Velasquez, 
had it not been for his spiritual advisers ; but, guided 
by these, he was enabled to leave Cuba under cover of 
night, and prosecute a voyage which resulted in achiev- 
ments and exploits that dazzled Europe with the splendor 
and brilliance of their renown — achievments which have 
lent their lustre to the glory of Spain, which planted the 



62 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

cross m the capital of the New World, and furnished for 
history an example of Catholic missions, when no diffi- 
culties retarded their progress, and no other power was 
a competitor for the goal to be won. These battles of 
the conquest are described by Spanish historians with all 
the pomp and parade due to the sterner and well-poised 
conflicts of the armies of France and England. They 
enter into a minute detail of particulars, mingling many 
exaggerated and incredible legends with the real and 
marvelous ; so that the student of history is at times led 
to forget that the victories of Cortez were gained over 
savages, who had no letters — who were ignorant of the 
use of metals — who had not broken in a single animal 
to labor — who wielded no better weapons than those 
which could be made out of sticks, flints, and fish-bone 
— who regarded a horse-soldier as a monster, half man 
and half beast, and who took a musketeer for a sorcerer, 
able to scatter the thunder and lightning of the skies. 
But when we find in every combat, no equality of dis- 
cipline or danger ; and when every narrative closes with 
an account of thousands slain on the one side, while not 
a single person falls on the other, the most labored des- 
criptions of the ferocious disposition of the troops, or of 
the various vicissitudes of the engagement, become 
insipid, and leave the impression indelibly stamped upon 
the reader's heart, that a murderous band of gold-seekers, 
whose path might be traced by blood, and the heaps 
of the slaughtered victims of avarice and superstition, 
pushed their way from Vera Cruz to Mexico, and, de- 
throning the hereditary ruler of a mighty empire, left 
an imperishable monument of the second enterprize of 
the Roman church, in the ruins of the Mexican capital, 



IX AMERICAN HISTORY. 63 

in the annihilation of their government, and in the 
innumerable graves of the slaughtered dead. 

It was on the afternoon of the 2d of April, A. D. 
1519, that the fleet of Cortez, consisting of eleven ves- 
sels — the largest of a hundred tons, three of sixty or 
seventy tons, the rest small, open barks — rode into the 
harbor of St. Juan de Ulua. On board of these were 
six hundred and seventy men — seamen, soldiers, priests 
and all. The first ripple ever formed by the wake of 
a Castilian ship had kissed the feet of a band of natives 
who were standing upon the shore of their forest-home, 
gazing with troubled wonder upon objects strange and 
startling. One hundred and eighty miles distant, in 
the capital of a powerful empire, was a monarch trem- 
bling with superstitious fear. The pruphecy of the war- 
god, as he stood upon the shore of the lake that washes 
the environs of the capital, prior to launching his wiz- 
ard skiff composed of snake-skins, still sounded in his 
ears. It had been predicted that from the rising sun a 
powerful race should come, who should subjugate the 
land, destroy their religion, plunder their temples, and 
enslave their race. The prophecy was being fulfilled. 
A year had scarcely passed since two natives, who were 
stationed in the province of Yucatan, had brought in- 
telligence to the priests that the race had come. Doubt 
and dismay shrouded their hearts, and gloomy fore- 
bodings took possession of their souls. The bravest 
trembled, and the stoutest faltered. A city threatened 
by an earthquake, when the heavens are black with 
smoke, and a breathing tempest spreads its dark pall 
over the face of nature — when the earth is hot with 



64: THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

hidden fires — when the very ground is agitated by an 
unseen force — when the solid strata of the globe is 
bent and tossed like the waves of an angry ocean — 
when terror writes the record of its wo on every fea- 
ture — when to shun danger is to rush perhaps into its 
very jaws — when the blackness of despair drinks up 
the gaze — when the soul sinks, the spirits droop, the 
strength deserts the frame — when man, from absolute 
fear, lays his hopes, interests and even existence, with- 
out a murmur, into the hands of an all-powerful Provi- 
dence; — this is a scene calculated to awaken the live- 
liest sympathy of the beholder, and calls for the most 
strenuous exertions. But such a scene is tame when 
contrasted with the oue that wrapped a free and happy 
people in the folds of an insupportable grief. 

A dark and portentous cloud hung over all Mexico, 
and, as if threatened with the descent of an avalanche, 
the whole nation rose to escape the danger. The 
bravest stood in the breach, and insisted that Cortez 
should not set foot on land. They offered him every 
assistance, and promised him every aid, that he might 
pursue his voyage. To their entreaties Cortez turned 
a deaf ear, and persisted in his determination of being 
conducted into the audience chamber of Montezuma. 

It is well known that painters in the train of the 
Mexican chiefs sketched every object of interest, that 
they might convey to Montezuma an adequate concep- 
tion of everything that transpired. In this way the 
Emperor became apprised of every movement of Cortez 
and his band, and sent back a decided remonstrance, 
stating, in plain and unmistakable language, that while 



a AMERICAN HISTORY. 65 

he entertained the highest respect for the King of 
Spain, yet he could not allow foreign troops to approach 
his capital, or remain in his territory. 

From this point dates the commencement of the dark 
history of the invasion of Mexico. Cortez, without one 
word of opposition from the priests, decided to trample 
upon the rights of a free and prosperous nation, by 
marching to the capital over the dead bodies of slaugh- 
tered patriots. He did this under the pretence that he 
was an ambassador of Charles V. It is but due to the 
Emperor of Germany to say that Cortez was without a 
commission from the Court of Spain, and was not only 
an outlaw, but a rebel. Priests, of the order of Loyola, 
were the instigators of the plot. They procured for 
Cortez an outfit, shared his triumphs, and were made 
rich from the spoils of a plundered capital. 

The Mexican empire, though, from traditionary ac- 
counts, it had subsisted but one hundred and thirty 
years, was at that period at a pitch of grandeur to 
which no society ever attained in so short a time. Ex- 
tending from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific, over 
territories stretching (with some small interruptions) 
about fifteen hundred miles from east to west, and nx 
hundred from north to south, it comprehended provinces 
not inferior, in fertility, population and opulence, to any 
in the torrid zone. The character of the Emperor, as 
drawn by different historians, makes him, of all the 
princes who had swayed the scepter over this thriving 
province, the most haughty, violent and impatient of 
control. His subjects looked upon him with awe. his 
enemies with terror. The former respected him for his 
talents and bravery : the latter dreaded the power of 
• 6 



66 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

his arm, and were overcome by the sagacity of the war- 
rior. And yet this bold chieftain, from the landing of 
the Spaniards, was embarrassed in all his operations, 
and evinced an amount of trepidation and alarm that 
broke the heroic courage of his warrior-band. His sub J 
jects caught the spirit, and a panic of terror and dismay 
pervaded the public mind, and froze with fear the pub- 
lic heart. Such was the influence exerted by those 
legends which, from time immemorial, have been 
handed down from father to son. They were mere 
traditions, but superstition transformed them into ter- 
rible and threatening facts. These disarmed Monte- 
zuma of his courage, wrapped the horizon of hope in 
the drapery of a starless night, and made him like a 
traveler who has lost his way in the darkness among 
precipices, where any step may dash him to pieces, and 
where to retreat or to advance is equally perilous. 

Notwithstanding these apprehensions, so soon as 
Montezuma became convinced of the hostile intentions 
of Cortez, he made vigorous efforts to prepare a defense 
that should place an insurmountable barrier to his ap- 
proach. But discontent had alienated the hearts of 
some of his subjects. These quickly enrolled them- 
selves under the standards of Spain. All his exertions 
to reclaim these, or to instigate others, were in vain. 
As though the fiat of Jehovah had gone forth that the 
Indian race should be subjugated, success crowned the 
efforts of the conquerors, and they went on from con- 
quering to conquer, until most of the Western World 
was brought under the dominion of the cross — not 
with its inhabitants converted to the faith, but en- 
tombed; not by proclaiming peace, and heralding the 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 07 

good news of a Saviour crucified, and a full and free 
atonement made for all who would believe ; but by be- 
strewing the path of the heralds of salvation with the 
carcasses of the mangled dead and heaps of smoking 
ruins. 

Among those provinces first to enroll themselves 
under the Spanish flag was Z"inpoalla. By so doing 
she was reduced to slavery, her altars were overturned, 
her idols thrown down and destroyed, and in their place 
was erected the crucifix and the image of the Virgin 
Mary. Hascala, a neighboring province, toward which 
Cortez now directed his march, having learned of the 
indignities and insults which the images and altars of 
Zempoalla had been subjected to, resolved to protect 
their sun-temples from like treatment, and to avenge 
their insulted deities. Three hard-fought battles are 
recorded by Spanish historians, and this nation was in 
slavery. Eobertson records the fact that fifty nobles, 
who bore food to the Spanish camp with friendly inten- 
tions, were seized, their hands were cut off, and, they 
with their bleeding stumps, were sent back to their fel- 
lows. This, together with the fire-arms and horses used 
in battle, filled them with terror, and caused them to 
address their enemy as follows: 

14 If you are divinities of a cruel and savage nature, 
we present you five slaves, that you may drink their 
blood and eat their flesh. If you are men, here is 
meat, bread and fruit to nourish you. If you are mild 
deities, accept an offering of incense and variegated 
plumes." 

Though Father Almedo accompanied the expedition 
as chaplain, yet we find Cortez again considering him- 



68 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

self the instrument employed by Heaven to propagate 
the faith ; and though wanting both in knowledge and 
morals, with a life stained by acts that would disgrace 
any but a Spaniard, we find him telling the Hascalans 
of the Deity he worshiped, and urging upon them the 
advantage of abandoning their deities, and turning to 
cleaner images, viz: the Virgin Mary and the cross. 
But the Hascalans clung to their forms of worship with 
an unyielding tenacity that surprised all. Cortez, pro- 
voked at their obstinacy, turned to his soldiery, as at 
Zempoalla, and ordered them to overthrow their altars 
and shiver their idols. Almedo then stepped forth and 
checked his impetuosity — whether for the reason that 
Cortez was usurping business that belonged to him, or 
not, we cannot tell. His reproof was bitter, pointed 
and appropriate. After representing the imprudence 
and injustice of such a measure, he asserted boldly the 
principle that religion was not to be propagated by the 
sword, or infidels to be converted by violence ; that other 
weapons were to be employed in this ministry. Patient 
instruction must enlighten the understanding, and pious 
example captivate the heart, before men can be induced 
to abandon error and embrace the truth. Among scenes 
where a narrow-minded bigotry appears in such close 
proximity with oppression and cruelty, sentiments so 
liberal and humane soothe the mind with unexpected 
pleasure, and administer a rebuke which should have 
been sounded in the ears of every Catholic, from Con- 
stantine the Great to Pope Pius IX — a rebuke which, 
if it had been heeded, would have been the harbinger 
of a brighter destiny and happier auspices, for the op- 
pressed of every clime. 



IN' AMERICAN HISTORY. 69 

We now pass to Cholula, which was to the Mexicans 
what Mecca is to the Mahometan, or Jerusalem to the 
Christian, the holy city of Anahuac. Here was the far- 
famed pyramid whose base covered fifty-four acres, and 
the platform whose truncated summit embraces more 
than an acre in extent. Its perpendicular height is one 
hundred and seventy-seven feet. On the summit stood 
a sumptuous temple, in which was the image of the 
mystic deity, god of the air, with ebon features, unlike 
the fair complexion he wore on earth, when lie taught 
the inhabitants the arts of civilization, better forms of 
government, and a more spiritualized religion, in which 
the only sacrifices were fruits and flower:?. Xow. on his 
head was a mitre waving with plumes of fire : a resplen- 
dent collar of gold encircled his neck, pendants of mo- 
saic turquoise were in his ears, a jeweled scepter in one 
hand, and a shield curiously painted, the emblem of his 
rule over the winds, in the other. Hither resorted pil- 
grims who came from the farthest corners of the prov- 
ince to offer devotions upon the shrine of their God. 
Here many of the kindred races had temples of their 
own in the city, in the same manner as some Christian 
nations have in Rome. M Nothing/' says Prescott, 
"could be more grand than the view which met the eye 
from the area on the summit of the pyramid. Toward 
the west stretched that bold barrier of porphyritic rock 
which nature has reared around the valley of Mexico, 
with the two world-renowned volcanoes standing like 
two colossal sentinels to guard the entrance to the en- 
chanted region. Far away to the east was seen the coni- 
cal head of Orizaba, soaring high into the clouds, and 
nearer, the barren though beautifully shaped Sierra de 



70 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

Melanche, throwing its broad shadows over the plains 
of Hascala. Three of these are volcanoes higher than 
the highest mountain peak in Europe, and shrouded in 
snow r s which never melt under the fierce sun of the 
tropics. At the feet of the spectator lay the sacred 
city, Cholula, with its bright towers and pinnacles 
sparkling in the sun, reposing amid gardens and ver- 
dant groves which then thickly studded the cultivated 
environs of the capital." 

Such was the magnificent prospect that met the gaze 
of the conquerors, as, rested in frame, they came to 
share in the hospitalities of the city of temples. Cortez 
came, and soon perceived signs of discontent, which 
indicated that preparations were being made to destroy 
him and his followers. It was too true. Montezuma 
had invited him, and given orders for his cordial recep- 
tion, at the same time indulging the hope that the 
impious Spaniards would suffer from the wrath of the 
gods, or from the belief that success would crown his 
efforts in marching against a common foe, under the 
immediate protection of divinities whose mansions were 
being defiled, and whose power had been insulted in the 
place of its peculiar residence. Cortez, upon learning 
these facts, made preparations to wreak his vengeance 
upon an unsuspecting foe. The signal was given. The 
troops rushed upon the unprotected inhabitants, who, 
destitute of arms, and incapable of defense, dropped 
their weapons from the nerveless grasp, and, motionless 
and powerless, died by thousands. For two days the 
work of death went on, during which the wretched 
inhabitants suffered all that the destructive rage of the 
Spaniards, or the implacable revenge of their Indian 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 71 

allies, could inflict. Six thousand Cholulans were 
slaughtered, without the loss of a single Spaniard. 
Such were the victories won by Spanish arms, whose 
deeds of daring have been hymned in song and st 
and whose zeal for the faith has Leon chronicled by the 
historic pen. Such were the men whose coming ushered 
in the dusky era of the night of gloom, that settled 
down and now rests upon the valleys and mountains of 
Mexico and the fertile plains of Peru. 

There seems to have been a common center to the 
circumference of all the thoughts and plana that occu- 
pied the minds of Spanish invaders. That center was 
gold. This was the loadstone that attracted the magnet 
of their hearts, and toward it ever the needle of their 
wills and impulses was pointed. This was to be found 
in the capital, and thither, with buoyant step, they 
hastened on. At length, on turning an angle of the 
sierra, a view suddenly presented itself to the war-worn 
veterans that richly compensated them for the toils of 
many a weary march. Before them lay the golden 
dream of youth, with its picturesque assemblage of 
water, woodland and cultivated plains — its shining 
cities and shadowy hills all spread out like some gay 
and gorgeous panorama. It was the valley of Mexico, 
with its forests of oak, sveamore and cedar stretching 
far away at their feet, beyond yellow fields of maize and 
the towering maguey, intermingled with orchards and 
blooming gardens. In the center of the great basin 
were beheld the lakes, occupying then a much larger 
portion of its surface than at present : their borders 
thickly studded with towns and hamlets, and in the 
midst, like some Indian empress, with her coronal of 



/ 2 THE HOMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

jewels, the fair city of Mexico, with her white towers 

and pyramidal temples, reposing, as it were, on the 

bosom of the waters — the far-famed Venice of the 

Aztecs. High over all, rose the royal hill of Chapul- 

tepec, the residence of the Mexican monarchs, crowned 

with the same grove of gigantic cypresses which at 

this day fling their broad shadows over the land. In 

the distance, beyond the blue waters of the lake, and 

nearly screened by intervening foliage, was seen a 

shining speck, the rival capital of Tezeneo ; and still 

further, the dark belt of porphyry girdling the valley 

around, like a rich setting which nature had devised for 

the fairest of her jewels. Such was the beautiful vision 

which broke on the eyes of the conquerors. " And even 

now." continues Prescott, " when so sad a change has 

come over the scene — when the stately forests have 

been laid low, and the soil, unsheltered from the fierce 

rays of a tropical sun, is, in many places, abandoned to 

sterility — when the waters have retired, leaving a broad 

and ghastly margin, white with the incrustation of 

salts, while the cities and hamlets on their borders have 

mouldered into ruins — even now that desolation broods 

over the landscape, so indestructible are the lines of 

beauty which nature has traced on its features, that no 

traveler, however cold, can gaze on them with any other 

emotions than those of astonishment and rapture." 

It was on the morn of the 8th of November, 1518, 

that the Spanish general was up mustering his followers 

with the first streak of dawn, that with 

11 rosy steps in th' eastern clime, 
Advancing, sowed the earth with orient pearls." 

With beating hearts they gathered around their ban- 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 73 

ners — the trumpet sent forth its spirit-stirring peals 
M water and woodlands, till they died away in 
distant echoes among the mountains. The sacred flames 
on the altars of numberless temples, dimly seen through 
the gray mists of morning, indicated the site of the 
capital, till temple, tower and palace were fully revealed 
in the glorious illumination which the sun, as he rose 
we the eastern barrier, poured over the beautiful 
valley. This may well be called a memorable day in 
history, as that on which the Europeans first set foot in 
the capital of the Western World. The remainder of 
this conquest — so much of it as has a direct bea: _ 
upon my present subject — is soon told. 

Now we see Cortez leading his troops along one of the 
causeways, which, stretching across the lakes to the 
city, link the capital to the opposite shore. Indian 
warriors and Mexican chiefs are crowding past him, 
gazing with a bewildered expression. Away in the 
distance comes the glittering retinue of the Emperor, 
slowly emerging from the great street which then, as 
now, led through the heart of the city. Amid a crowd 
of Indian nobles, preceded by three officers of state, 
bearing golden wands, was the royal palanquin or 
carriage, blazing with burnished gold. It was borne 
on the shoulders of nobles, and over it a canopy q{ 
gaudy feather-work, powdered with jewels and fringed 
with silver, was supported by four attendants of the 
same rank. The emperor descends from his litter, and, 
leaning on the arms of his nephew and brother, he 
advances beneath the canopy, while obsequious attendants 
bestrew the ground with the Sliest tapestry, that his 
imperial feet may not be contaminated by the rude soil. 
7 



74 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

This is the portrait drawn by those who beheld the 
emperor at this time. He was about forty years of age, 
with a person tall, slim and well made. His hair was 
black and straight, his beard thin, complexion pale, and 
features serious, though destitute of that melancholy 
air of dejection which, in later years, settled upon them. 
He moved with dignity and grace, and his whole bearing 
bespoke royal ancestry and princely blood. At his table 
none but the costliest viands were served, and dishes 
never were returned. His dessert surpassed, in splendor 
and expense, any served up to the princes of Europe. 
It was gathered fresh from the most opposite climes, 
and his board displayed the products of his ow T n tempe- 
rate region, and the luscious fruits of the tropics, 
plucked the day previous from the green groves of the 
warmer regions, and transmitted with the speed of 
steam, by means of couriers, to the capital. " It was," 
says Prescott, " as if some kind fairy should crown our 
banquets with the spicy products that but yesterday 
were growing in a sunny isle of the far-off Indian seas." 
Nobles were glad to pay him homage ; jesters, music 
and dancing afforded him pleasure in his pastime hours. 
Secretaries bore him the petitions of suitors, and carried 
back the royal mandates. None could enter his apart- 
ments without covering their garments, however rich, 
under the coarse mantle of the nequen, and moving, 
with bare feet and downcast eyes, into the royal audi- 
ence chamber. Palaces, hung with the costliest trap- 
pings, decorated by all that art or wealth could bestow, 
furnished him a home. Temples, on whose flat roofs 
altars threw their flickering, undying flames over the 
city, which lay spread out beneath, were erected at an 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 75 

expense that almost exceeds belief, and here he wor- 
shiped. Gardens beautifully laid out, fragrant with 
flowers, and watered by artificial founts, borne from a 
distant eminence, bj means of aqueducts which rivaled, 
in simplicity and convenience, the Croton works of a 
remote century, administered to his happiness and 
delighted fa Sucli was the emperor — such 

his ancestral home. See him leaning on the 
aims of his kindred ! Far as tfc m reach are 

crov. r<k standing on those pyramidal temples 

crowned with tapering sanctuaries and altars blaz _ 
with inextinguishable tires : others, on the flat roofs of 
the palaces, are vying with each other in raptures of 
applause. > J airs enliven the scene : the wands 

and fall, and with them goes the multitude. 
Through this dense throng of people, who swarmed 
through th te and on the canals, filling e 

doorway and window, and civ. _ on every roof, comes 

the bold, dashing cavalier of Spain, riding his pran._ _ 
steed and surrounded by his chivalrous train, 
dismounts, throws his reins to his page, and supported 
by his cavaliers, advances to meet the monarch of the 
empire. The interview must have been one of uncom- 
mon in: both. itezuma i beheld 
the lord of the broad realms he had traversed, wfa 
magnificence and power had been the theme o: 
tongue. In the Spaniard, on the other hand, the Aztec 
prince for the first time saw the strange being whose 
history was s:« mysteriously connected with his -; 
The one was the personification of a cherished hope — 
gold, his splendor and his courtesy dazzled and 
convinced ; the other was the subject toward which the 



76 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

finger of prophesy had pointed. His brave bearing, his 
courtly manners, struck terror into the heart. The 
brother of the emperor conducted the foreign guests, 
who, with colors flying and music playing, made their 
way to their royal apartments." In a short time Monte- 
zuma pays them a visit, and upon his departure takes 
leave of them with a politeness not unworthy of a court 
more refined. " You are now," said he, "in your own 
house ; refresh yourselves after your fatigue, and be 
happy until I return." 

The scene changes. Cortez leads the train within 
the royal audience chamber, and in the bosom of a 
powerful empire takes the emperor captive and leads 
him to his quarters. Now a prisoner, we see Cortez 
endeavoring to instruct him in the principles of the faith. 
But neither the respect of Montezuma for Cortez, the 
fear of death, nor the hope of liberty, could influence 
him who knew how to rule, and whom to fear. He 
would not renounce his gods ; he would not embrace the 
Christian faith. A faith built upon the text of pike 
and gun, with doctrines supported by apostolic blows 
and knocks, had no charm for him, and it was spurned. 
The king and people declared themselves tributary to 
the crown of Castile. Cortez was summoned before 
Montezuma ; he was informed that as all the purposes 
of the embassy were fully accomplished, the gods had 
declared their will, and the people had signified their 
desire that he and his followers should immediately 
depart the empire. It is unnecessary to go further into 
detail. The fact that Cortez consented to do so — that 
he left Mexico under pretence of going to the Gulf for 
the purpose of constructing ships, when, in fact, he went 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 77 

to head against a rebellion which Navarez was raising 
in a distant province — is well known ; also, that, by a 
series of unparalleled exploits, Cortez marched from the 
capital to the coast, subdued his foe, added a large 
number of recruits to his service, and returned just in 
time to save his garrison from annihilation. I need 
not dwell upon the perfidy of -Alvarado, who was left in 
charge of the garrison, or describe how he lost the re- 
spect of Montezuma, and pursued a course which has 
branded his name with eternal infamy, by leading his 
companions up to a temple filled with the Aztec nobility, 
who were dressed in their most magnificent gala cos- 
tume, sprinkled with precious stones, their necks, arms 
and legs ornamented with bracelets of gold ; and it may 
be, perhaps, unnecessary to relate how that as soon as 
the dance commenced, amid the ceremony of a religious 
chant, and the wild, discordant minstrelsy of the dance, 
the concerted signal was given, when the Spaniards, 
who had been housed and fed by the hospitality of an 
unsuspecting nation, rushed with drawn swords upon a 
friendly host, smote down the flower of a nation, made 
the pavements red with blood, and left not one of that 
gay company to mourn his brother's loss. Their bodies 
were rifled of jewelry by those who knew neither shame 
nor honor — whose breasts were steeled against all those 
finer sentiments and feelings that enable man to par- 
take of the godlike qualities of his Creator. 

Mourning and desolation were borne within every 
home, and many a doleful ballad rehearsing the tragic 
incidents of the story, and adapted to the plaintive 
national airs, continued to be chanted by the bards, as 
sitting beneath the roof-tree of a dreary abode, they 



78 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

remembered the wrongs and injuries heaped upon their 
fathers. It is not difficult to anticipate the result of 
such daring, high-handed perfidy. The Mexicans 
rushed to arms, and fought like brave men, long and 
well. The ground was piled with the heaps of the slain. 
Cortez and his brave companions found themselves sur- 
rounded by an infuriated foe, who swore eternal ven- 
geance against all that was of Spain. All know that, 
as a last resort, Montezuma was dragged forth to 
appease and assuage the wrath which threatened their 
destruction — that he was treated with contempt by his 
race — that he was wounded in the affray, from which, 
broken in spirit, deserted by his friends, and despised 
by his nation, he died — died breathing and invoking a 
burning curse upon Cortez — died praying for the nation 
whom he had ruined. Cortez was defeated, and was 
driven from the city with irreparable loss. He fought 
his way to Hascala, recruited his strength, and passed 
months in continued warfare, until his fleet, transported 
from the Gulf to the lake, was launched upon the 
waters which never before had been disturbed by aught 
but the light canoe ; and in process of time he starved 
out, burnt out and killed out the inhabitants of that 
beautiful capital which received him as a god. No one 
can read the history of the conquest of Mexico, as 
painted by Prescott, or told by Eobertson, or described 
by the Spanish historians, without feeling emotions too 
painful and lacerating to be endured. No one can 
review the scenes that Cortez passed through, without 
feeling to drop a tear of sympathy upon the unmarked 
graves of Aztec nobility. Montezuma was a noble man ; 
his soul was magnanimous, his spirit brave ; but super- 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 79 

stition made him a child. His followers knew not 
cowardice: but he taught them subjection, and Cortez 
made use of the superstition of Montezuma, and of their 
respect and devotion to their leader, to further his pro- 
jects, work their rain, and build up for himself a for- 
tune and a name. Historians have described the tragic 
portions of Mexican history with a painter's skill : they 
have preserved legends which throw a poetic coloring 
over the tamer parts of the picture : but, when finished 
and complete — when the last word is written — when 
Cortez is proven to be a hero, the priests evangelists 
and followers, the true and faithful soldiers of the cross 
— still, a feeling of sadness pervades the breast — the 
eye wanders away to Calvary — it stretches on farther 
still, and rests upon that star that marked the manger 
of the God-Man ; the ear listens to the strain of 
heavenly music proclaiming a wide good will to all : it 
catches the words pronounced by Him whose right it is 
to rule : "My kingdom is not of this world " — words 
which, embodied in a principle, have been for eighteen 
centuries the dividing line between a professed and a 
real Christianity. Jesus coveted not, neither did he 
esteem, the power of courts nor the armies of kings. 
Catholicism, having made the cross a symbol of power 
and a standard of conquest, desires both, and labors and 
struggles to obtain them. With the banners of a 
nation goes its genius and spirit. When the hordes of 
the infidel prophet swept over the Eastern World, con- 
quest and tribute were inscribed upon their banners. 
They made no pretension to anything higher. If they 
could make converts, well; if not, the nation conquered 
must pay tribute, or die. Search the historic page— 



SO THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

hunt out tlie darkest, bloodiest passage in Mohammedan 
history ; beside it place the record of the conquest of 
Mexico, and me thinks Archbishop Hughes himself 
would blush to behold the contrast. Mexico is Catholic. 
Its capital, once laid in ruins, has been rebuilt. Poor, 
homeless bards chanted their wrongs to the evening 
breeze, which, freighted with sympathy, bore the echo 
to the listening ear of the disheartened and dismayed, 
cheered the wanderer in his exile, and breathed hope 
into his spirit. Spaniards came to love the enslaved ; a 
common interest chained their hearts together. The 
oppressions of Spain were felt to be too grievous to be 
borne. In 1821, the Spanish yoke was thrown off, and 
in 1847, the stars and stripes of our own free republic 
floated over a disconsolate city, since which time revolu- 
tion, crime and bloodshed have been the order of the day. 
The Catholic religion is established by law ; education is 
limited, and ignorance universal. Turn the eye to 
Peruvian history, and a future darker yet is in reserve. 



At the time of the Spanish conquest, Peru was more 
extensive than at present. Its kings were called Incas ; 
they were held to be a sacred race, to be descended 
from the sun, and were universally adored by the 
people. The sun was the object of their worship. In 
arts, civilization and agriculture they stood peerless 
and alone, first and foremost in the van of nations that 
inhabited the Western continent. Temples and palaces 
were constructed out of stone. They were skilled in 
working in metals ; vessels from silver and gold were 
made beautiful in appearance, and roads were constructed 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 81 

of an excellent quality, which made neighbors of 
remote provinces, and advanced a general internal 
commerce and prosperity. Animals here alone had 
been broken to labor as beasts of burden. Though 
ignorant of writing, yet the record of remarkable events 
had been preserved by means of paintings and knotted 
cards of various colors. Forty years after the discovery 
of America, the first decided invasion of Peru was made. 
As early as 1524, there were three persons settled in 
Panama, on whom the impression produced by the dis- 
covery of the Southern Ocean, by Balboa, remained so 
strong and ineffaceable, that even the defeats which had 
attended numerous expeditions could not dissipate it. 

" In an age when the spirit of adventure was bo ardent 
and vigorous, that large fortunes were wasted, and the 
most alarming dangers braved, in pursuit of discoveries 
merely possible, the faintest ray of hope was followed 
with an eager expectation, and the slightest information 
was sufficient to inspire such perfect confidence as con- 
ducted men to the most arduous undertakings. In such 
an age men rushed forward to see and to conquer. The 
names of the trio who drank in the spirit, and partook of 
the rage of discovery, were Francisco Pizarro, Diego de 
Almagro, and Hernando Luque. The one was a bastard, 
the second a foundling, and the third an ecclesiastic. As 
the spirit of discovery and acquisition uniformly accom- 
panied that of adventure, in the Xew World, and by 
that strange union both acquired an increase of force, 
this confederacy, formed by ambition and avarice, was 
confirmed by the most solemn act of religion. Luque 
celebrated mass, divided a consecrated host into three, 
and reserving one part for himself, gave the other two 



82 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

to his associates, of which they partook ; and thus, in the 
name of the Prince of Peace, ratified a contract of which 
plunder and bloodshed were the objects."* 

The history of the conquest of Peru does not differ 
materially from that of Mexico. Men, possessing the 
same religion, governed by the same influences, and con- 
trolled by like impulses, planned the expedition, partook 
of its toils, and enjoyed its trophies. As loud professions 
were made by Pizarro as by Cortez, that he came to 
enlighten the natives with the knowledge of truth, and 
lead them in the way of happiness ; while outrages, 
rapaciousness, and cruelty, were committed by himself 
and band to an extent that rivaled even the disgraceful 
career of the Spaniards in Mexico. Montezuma was 
seized in his capital, and Atahualpa was taken captive 
in the Spanish camp, where he had been invited as a 
guest. It was on the morning of November 1 6th, 1533, 
that Pizarro, notwithstanding the character that he had 
assumed of an ambassador from a powerful monarch, 
who courted an alliance with the Inca, and in violation 
of the repeated offers which he had made to him of his 
own friendship and assistance, determined to avail him- 
self of the unsuspicious simplicity with which the Inca 
relied on his pretensions, to seize his person during the 
interview to which he had been invited. 

The Inca approached, heralded by four hundred men, 
in a uniform dress, as harbingers to clear the way, seated 
on a couch adorned with plumes of various colors, and 
almost covered with plates of gold and silver, enriched 
with precious stones, and borne on the shoulders of his 

° Robertson's History of America, p. 262. 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 83 

principal attendants. Behind him were officers carried 
in the same manner. These were followed by singers 
and dancers, while the whole plain was covered with 
troops amounting to thirty thousand men. " As the 
Inca drew near the Spanish quarters, Father Vincent 
Valverde, chaplain to the expedition, advanced bearing 
in one hand a crucifix, and in the other a breviary ; and 
in a long discourse explained to him the doctrine of the 
creation, the fall of Adam, the incarnation, the sufferings 
and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the appointment of 
St. Peter as God's vicegerent on earth, the transmission 
of his apostolic power by succession to the Popes, and the 
donation made to the King of Castile by Pope Alexan- 
der of all the regions of the Xew World. In conse- 
quence of all this, he required Atahualpa to embrace the 
Christian faith, to acknowledge the supreme jurisdiction 
of the Pope, and to submit to the King of Spain as his 
lawful sovereign, promising that the General would inter- 
cede in his favor, if he submitted ; but denouncing ven- 
geance, if he refused. With the tragic history of the 
Inca every child is familiar — how he was captured by 
Pizarro and his band, because he replied, calmly, that he 
was the rightful sovereign of Peru, and that he was una- 
ble to see how a foreign priest should pretend to give 
away his kingdom — how he declared he had no intention 
of renouncing the religion of his fathers, and asked for 
the authority by and according to which, Valverde ad- 
dressed him. " In this book," replied the priest, holding 
up the breviary. Atahualpa took it, turned it over, 
put it to his ear, and threw it to the ground, saying, 
" This thing is silent — it tells me nothing." Valverde, 
in great indignation, turning to the troops, called out, 



84 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

" To arms — to arms, Christians ! the Word of God is 
insulted. Avenge this profanation on these impious 
dogs." The troops fell upon the helpless guests, and 
continued to slaughter them until night closed the scene. 
Four thousand on one side were slain, and not a Spaniard 
on the other. The Inca, a prisoner, brought in gold to 
procure his release. A mock trial is instituted, of which 
Pizarro is judge and jury. The Inca is charged with 
being an usurper — an idolater — that he sacrificed human 
beings to the sun, kept a large number of concubines, 
and that since his imprisonment, he had wasted and 
embezzled the royal treasures, and had incited his sub- 
jects to take arms against the Spaniards. With such 
crimes was he charged ; of them he was convicted ; and 
for them Pizarro ordered the unhappy monarch to be led 
instantly to execution ; and what added to the bitterness 
of his last moments, the same monk, who had just rati- 
fied his doom, offered to console, and attempted to convert 
him. The argument used was a promise of a mitigation 
in the form of punishment. The dread of a cruel death 
extorted from the trembling victim a desire of receiving 
baptism. The ceremony was performed, and Atahualpa, 
instead of being burnt was strangled at the stake. 

With the death of the Inca closed the conquest of Peru. 
The troops were every where victorious, and the dominion 
of the Castilian monarch was every where established. 
Viceroys, appointed by the court of Spain, governed the 
nation till 1821, when a general revolt and uprising of 
the masses took place, and in 1824 the Spanish yoke was 
thrown off. " The history of the expeditions which ter- 
minated in the conquest of Mexico and Peru, displays, 
perhaps more strikingly than any other portion of the 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 85 

records of the human race, what is the naked and uncov- 
ered policy of the Roman church, and what would be its 
course, whenever and wherever, unchecked and unbridled, 
it is or shall be permitted to mark out its own paths for 
the securing of its interests, and the furthering its ope- 
rations, and increasing its power/' This history evidences 
to all that within the verge of Popish effort are embraced 
all the energies of the soul and bodv — that religion and 
■varioe are yoked together, and hand in hand journey 
together round the world — that she courts the power, the 
wealth, and the emoluments of earth, and at the same 
time clings with superstitious regard to the t'<jnn> and 
ceremonies of a human system — in tine, that she strives 
to serve God and mammon at the same time. The inflex- 
ible pride, and deliberate tyranny of these adventurers. 
their arrogant disregard of the rights of human nature, 
and calm survey of the desolation of empires, and destruc- 
tion of happiness and life, is rendered the more striking 
and instructive by the humility of their own original 
circumstances, which seemed to level and unite them, by 
habit and sympathy, with the mass of mankind. Gra- 
ham remarks, that the conquests of the Spaniards were 
accomplished with such rapidity, and followed with such 
barbarous oppression, that a very few years sufficed, not 
only entirely to subjugate, but almost wholly to extirpate, 
the slothful and effeminate idolaters, whom it was the 
will of God to destroy by their hands. The settlements 
that were founded in the conquered countries produced, 
from the nature of the soil, a vast influx of gold and sil- 
ver into Spain, and finally exercised a most pernicious 
influence on the liberty, industry, and prosperity of her 
people. But it was long before the bitter harvest of this 



86 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

golden shower was reaped ; and in an age so ignorant of 
political science, it could not be foreseen through the 
pomp and renown with which the acquisition of so much 
empire, and the acquisition of so much treasure, seemed 
to invest the Spanish monarchy. But the day of a right- 
eous retribution at length came. The child treated the 
mother with disdain ; the inhabitants, whose ancestry 
had forged chains for others, were forced to bear chains 
themselves. A church, beneath whose smiles and aus- 
pices the conquest had been made, turned upon her own 
children, and made conquests of them. The inhabitants 
of South America, of Mexico, and the Indies, groaning 
under grievous burdens, and tortured by a galling des- 
potism, are miserable in condition, wretched in life, and 
are destined we fear, to be hopeless in death. The Bible 
is their only hope, and this they burn. Missionaries are 
their best earthly friends : these they shun and persecute. 
Jesus is their only Saviour, and Jesus is forgotten ; while 
Mary and the cross, the saints and martyrs, are the ob- 
jects of their worship ; to these they offer their prayers. 

Mexico and Peru are overrun with Jesuits, Franciscans, 
and other ecclesiastics. The ancient inhabitants of 
America have imbibed some faint knowledge of the cere- 
monies and forms of the Eomish religion ; but these 
feeble rays of instruction are totally eclipsed by the 
gloomy suggestions of their native superstition, and the 
corrupt influence of their barbarous customs and manners. 
They have been stripped of their native independence, 
and plundered of their wealth, by swarming missionaries 
and plotting Jesuits. That greedy and ambitious order 
claimed a great part of their goods and possessions, as a 
recompense due to their labors in the cause of religion ; 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 87 

and hence arose for a time a warm contest between the 
priests of the Roman faith, and the guides of the Indian 
in matters of religion. The contest was decided by the 
law of force. The depopulating soldier, sword in hand, 
gave weight and authority to the instructions of the Jes- 
uits, by wresting out of the hands of the lawful possessor 
whatever the Romish priests and monks thought proper 
to claim, and by treating the innocent and plundered 
sufferers with all the severity that the most barbarous 
spirit of oppression and injustice could suggest. By such 
means a few tribes have been reduced to servitude, and 
are enrolled among the trophies of the cross. There 
are still in South America about three millions of Pa- 
gans. These consist of Indians who live remote from 
the European settlements, wander about in the woods, 
and must be, like their brethren, reclaimed from that 
desultory manner of living, and civilized by an inter- 
course with persons whose insinuating and humane man- 
ners are adapted to attract their love, and excite their 
imitation, before they can receive or retain any adequate 
notions of the Christian doctrine. This the Jesuits saw, 
and have modeled their plan accordingly. They have 
erected cities, and founded civil societies, cemented by 
governments and laws, like the European States, in sev- 
eral Indian provinces, both in South and North America. 
Thus they are enabled to discharge the double functions 
of magistrates and doctors among these, their new sub- 
jects and disciples ; and that they may exert an unlim- 
ited influence, and hold an absolute sway over their 
minds, hearts, and persons, they forbid the approach of 
Europeans, under the pretence of preserving their morals 
and sentiments pure and uncorrupted. 



88 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

In the year 1730, a memorial was sent to the Court of 
Spain, by Don Martin de Bornu, at that time Spanish 
Governor of Paraguay, in which the Jesuits are charged 
with the most ambitious projects, and the most rebellious 
designs, represented as setting up an independent gov- 
ernment, accused of carrying on a prodigious trade, and 
of building up for themselves a power with which to 
overthrow the power of the State. The public did not 
believe the charge. The illusion lasted for a time. In 
1750, the Courts of Spain and Lisbon entered into a 
treaty for fixing the limits of their respective domin- 
ions in South America. Then the true character of the 
Jesuits was revealed. The illusion was dispelled. They 
who had formed an independent republic in the heart of 
those dominions, composed of the Indians, whom they 
had gained by the insinuating softness and affected mild- 
ness, humility, and generosity of their proceedings, were 
much alarmed. It proved to be one of the fundamental 
laws of this new state, founded under the mask of a 
Christian mission, that no bishop or governor, nor any 
other officer, civil, military, or ecclesiastical, nor even any 
individual Spaniard or Portuguese, should be admitted 
into their territories ; to the end that the proceedings and 
projects of the Jesuits might still remain an impenetrable 
secret. The members of their order were alone to be 
instructed in this profound and important mystery. The 
use of the Spanish language was prohibited, in order to 
prevent all communication between the Indians and that 
nation. The Indians were trained to the use of arms, 
furnished with artillery, instructed in the art of war, 
taught to behold the Jesuits as their sovereigns and 
their gods, and to look upon all other white people, 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 89 

not only as demoniacs and atheists, but as their barbar- 
ous and mortal enemies. Such was the state of affairs 
when, in 1752, the united troops of Spain and Portugal 
marched toward the eastern borders of the river Uraguay, 
to make the exchanges of certain villages that had been 
agreed upon in the treaty. Under various pretexts the 
Jesuits demanded a delay of thr> execution of the treaty. 
The delay was granted ; but, as the Spanish General, 
Gomez Trene Andrada, perceived that the holy fathers 
employed this delay in arming the Indians, and preparing 
for a defense, he wrote to his Court, and thence received 
orders to proceed forthwith to the execution of the treaty. 
A war ensued between the Spaniards and Portuguese on 
one side, and the Indians, animated by the Jesuits, on 
the other, in which the Spanish General lost his life, 
and the Jesuits were finally overcome. This was the 
original cause of the disgrace of this order at the Court 
of Portugal. 

8 



90 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 



CHAPTER IV. 

HISTORY OF JESUIT MISSIONS IN NORTH 
AMERICA. 

The origin of the Jesuits. — Loyola. — His plan. — Distinguished 
French Missionaries. — When they came. — Their success and 
their defeat. 

" One day a cannon shot from Pampeluna's walls 
broke the legs of the vilest scoundrel then in Spain, 
and left untouched his head. For religion, catholicity 
and man, that was the unluckiest cannon shot recorded 
in history ; for when the tibia of the wounded patient 
knitted, they miraculously supported the body of a 
saint. In his delirium he had imagined a conspiracy 
of disciples to himself, which, acting by stealth and in 
secret, would filch the world of its reason. Those 
familiar with jail philosophy can well appreciate the 
impulse which drives the criminal, convicted of thiev- 
ing, or burglary, or murder, and on the verge of the 
tomb, to indulge in fancies of a huger thieving, or a 
crueler and more infamous murder, and to long for life 
or unshackled arms, that he might become pre-emin- 
ently notorious by its enactment. Even such a thought 
came over the brain of Ignatius Loyola, the founder 
of the order profanely called of Jesus, and he recovered 
and was successful. Bishops and Popes greedily ac- 
cepted his schemes against humanity. The order was 
established on the basis of secresy, espionage, martin- 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 91 

etcy, and agglomeration of wealth and sway. For 
centuries this hideous conspiracy has rent the Catholic 
world, made and unmade Popes, dogmas, treaties and 
empires, and is at this moment a power so vast, so un- 
scrupulous, and so masterly, that it were folly to deny 
its strength, and cowardice to shrink from its contact. 
Its principles have ever been ultramontane and despotic. 
Its ministers are perhaps the best selected agents, the 
ablest men by training and discipline, the most learned 
in books and in the human heart, the most dexterous 
and the meanest in the world. 

11 They educate youth and console women ; they set 
up a golden calf before the unfortunate, stung to des- 
pair; they tend the sick, they bury the dead, they 
clothe themselves in the vesture of charity ; yet, are in 
their order, infamous. It would be folly to imagine 
that all its members personally partake of that infamy, 
are cognizant of the enormity of their principles, or 
of even their own acts, or yet are hypocrites. On the 
contrary, so perfectly and astutely do their systems of 
training, teaching and espionage warp young minds 
naturally honest and independent, that hundreds and, 
we doubt not, thousands of young men belong to their 
order, who believe its practices and rules to be the par- 
agon of religion, Christianity and virtue, and who lay 
all the acts of dubious morality to the good of the 
church. Occasionally, indeed, a contact with the liv- 
ing world lifts the veils of Mokanna, and discloses the 
horrid features of the power to which they are sub- 
jected. The victim then rebels outright, or shrinks 
back in terror into the form of rascality to which he 
had been so deftly accustomed. Young men. under 



92 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

such discipline, become indeed, in certain walks of life, 
a few of them, great in any art, one of whose requi- 
sites is deception ; but the greater portion continue for 
life abject and sneaking prevaricators, or seek in a wild, 
baseless implicity a mental revenge for the base arti- 
fice practiced on their youthful existence. Hypocrisy 
or atheism is the dilemma of the Jesuit scholar. With 
the Jesuit rulers practice is every thing — belief of little 
moment. 

" By means of affiliated orders of pious and confiding 
women, of dreaming and well-intentioned boys — such 
as the society of Vincent de Paul — by, too, the ordin- 
ary machinery of the church, distorted into a political 
system — but, more than all, by their schools for youth, 
they debase boyhood, enchain manhood, and sway em- 
pires and continents and nations hither and thither like 
reeds. Obedience is their law — espionage their earli- 
est and omnipresent engine. In their schools, among 
children, in their colleges, in their houses of residence, 
in their refectories, and in their beds the same law pre- 
vails. No two can be together. They make war on 
family, on friendship, on society, as they have always 
done on the principal nations. One may go alone ; no 
two can go together; there must be three, one of whom 
is a spy. All three of them may be spies, each upon 
the other, and yet not one is certain that he is not the 
victim or detective." 

Such is the portraiture, in brief, of Jesuitism, as 
drawn by a correspondent of the Democratic "Review. 
It could not have been written for political effect, for it 
was issued from the press nearly two months after suc- 
cess had everywhere crowned the efforts of an united 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 93 

democracy. It could not have been prompted by an 
ignorant and fanatical zeal, for every word is but an 
echo of that voice which the history of centuries has 
been sounding throughout the realm of mind and the 
domain of thought. It is an honest and candid view 
taken of that tremendous power whose gigantic arms 
begirt the globe, and are at this moment operating 
everywhere — around us, among us, by day and night, 
by speech and pen, by sword and olive branch, by peri- 
odicals, lectures, sermons, editorials and pamphlets. 

It is with the history of Jesuitism in the colonial his- 
tory of North America, that we have now to do. Coming 
here, as did the Jesuits, when America was a wilderness 
— planting the citadel of their hope in the heart of sav- 
age wilds, and in mountain fastnesses — taking captive 
the credulity and superstition of barbarians — moving 
with an air of sanctity among all — enduring persecution, 
famine, and pestilence, with martyr patience — instigating 
wars among rival tribes — reconciling opposing factions, 
and, above all, caring for the interests of their order, 
and furthering the policy of the church, they became a 
mighty lever in the hands of the Pope and French for 
building up and constructing a power whose benumbing 
shadows once stretched themselves over this continent, 
and obscured the effulgence of the Sun of Righteousness, 
whose beams quickened into life, and gladdened the 
growth, of those principles which make New England 
the heart, fountain, and parent, of religion, liberty, and 
free institutions. The Jesuit, unattended by followers, 
and trusting to his Indian guide, bearing in his hand 
the breviary, cross, and image of the Virgin Mary, 
plunged into the depths of forests ; entered the council 



94 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

chambers of powerful tribes ; learned, whether as pris- 
oner or guest, their language ; erected a chapel, hung it 
with trappings calculated to catch the eye, and woo the 
untutored fancy ; sung with apparent devotion the morn- 
ing and evening chant ; instructed the chief and child — 
the warrior bold in battle, and the cringing squaw — in 
the doctrines uf the church, until, by coiling around the 
ignorant savages the network of Eomish superstitions, 
the missionary, single and alone, was enabled to capti- 
vate, by the magic of idolatry, large and powerful tribes ; 
and after having accomplished his task, so great was his 
influence that he made them allies of a common govern- 
ment, and instruments of defense and persecution for the 
perfecting and carrying out that bold stroke of policy 
which characterized the French Government during her 
disgraceful supremacy over some of the fairest posses- 
sions of North America. 

So great was their power over the natives, that argu- 
ment or instruction was fruitless in disabusing the minds 
of the natives in relation to the absurdities practiced and 
taught by the Jesuits. Sacraments, Purgatory, the Invo- 
cation of Saints, the Eosary, the Cross, and Images, the 
lighting of churches, and all the practices of the church, 
were sacredly observed by the benighted Indians. Every- 
where they went throughout these western wilds as pio- 
neers of civilization and faith. Amid the snows of Hud- 
son's Bay — among the woody islands and beautiful inlets 
of the St. Lawrence — by the council- fires of the Hurons 
and Algonquins — at the sources of the Mississippi, where, 
first of the white men, their eyes looked upon the falls 
of St. Anthony, and then traced down the course of the 
bounding river, as it rushed onward to earn its title of 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 95 

Father of Waters — on the vast prairies of Illinois and 
Missouri — among the blue hills which hem in the salu- 
brious dwellings of the Cherokees — and in the thick 
cane-brakes of Louisiana — everywhere were found by 
the wild hunter, or the adventurous traveler, the tradi- 
tions of the " Black Robes," graven as with a pen of iron 
upon the memories, and legends that render the haunts 
of the wilderness classic ground. 

Marquette, Joiliet, Brebeuf, Jaques, Lollemand 
Easles, and Morest, are names that will live enshrined 
in the hearts of many of the earlier occupants of the 
boundless West. It is not my purpose to prove that 
Jesuitism has exerted a deleterious influence upon t lie 
best interests of the colonial government. We find 
that the Jesuit Fathers came here at an early period ; 
that they traversed regions, overcame difficulties and 
surmounted obstacles to perform a certain kind of labor ; 
we find that they accomplished their undertaking and 
were apparently successful. It is for history to chroni- 
cle facts — to show what was done, to point to endeavors, 
and to publish whether they were successful, and, if so, 
to speak of the results. 

It is a fact well known, that England and France 
started in a fair race for the magnificent prize of su- 
premacy in America. That France, for a time, out- 
stripped England — that she not only secured the St. 
Lawrence, fortified Quebec, but pushed forward her 
enterprise until her flag was floating over the whole 
wide range of the Canadas— of the lakes that girdle so 
large a portion of the Northwestern Territory — that, 
pushing forward into hitherto untrodden climes, she 
gained possession and established her trading posts from 



96 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

the Gulf of St. Lawrence all along the mighty rivers 
that tunnel the Western territories, until New France 
embraced almost the half of North America. It 
shall be my object to show that France was indebted 
to Jesuit missionaries for the achievement of this mighty 
enterprise, and that to them may be traced many of 
the causes which resulted in wresting the longed-for 
prize from the hands of the French, and conferring 
upon England the fruits of a conquest earned by toil 
and bought by treasure. 

As early as 1500, the Gulf of St. Lawrence was 
discovered by Gasper Contereal, who pushed on north- 
ward, by the coast of Labrador, almost to the entrance 
of the Hudson Bay. This expedition was undertaken 
more for mercantile advantage, than for the advance- 
ment of knowledge. Timber and slaves seem to have 
been the objects. No less than fifty-seven of the 
natives were brought back to Portugal and doomed to 
bondage. These unhappy savages proved so valiant 
and useful that great benefits were anticipated from 
trading on their servitude ; the dreary and distant land 
of their birth, covered with snow for half the year, was 
despised by the Portuguese, whose thoughts and hopes 
were ever turned to the fertile plains, the sunny skies 
and inexhaustible treasures of the East. 

Soon after, Pope Alexander VI issued a bull, bestow- 
ing the whole of the New World upon the kings of 
Spain and Portugal. England despised the decree, and 
France refused to acknowledge it. In 1523, Francis I, 
king of France, fitted out a squadron of four sliips to 
pursue discovery in the West. The command was 
entrusted to Giovanni Verazzono, of Florence. It has 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 97 

often been remarked as strange, that three Italians 
should have directed the discoveries of Spain, England 
and France, and thus become the instruments of dividing 
the dominions of the New World among alien powers, 
while their own classic land reaped neither glory nor 
advantage from the genius and courage of her sons. 
Of these voyages no permanent results were effected. 
Many of them pursued their explorations for a time, 
returned to report, left again their homes to find an 
ocean" burial, and to become the instruments of national 
defeat. 

There is an old Castilian tradition, that the Span- 
iards, having visited these coasts prior to any other 
nation, and having been disappointed in their search for 
gold, frequently exclaimed, u Acanada" signifying 
here is nothing, which sound the natives treasured and 
repeated to other Europeans upon their arrival. The 
strangers concluded that these words were a designa- 
tion, and from that time this magnificent country bore 
the name of Canada. On the 20th of April, 1534, 
Jacques Cartier set sail from St. Malo, with two ships 
containing one hundred and twenty men, to establish a 
colony in Canada. On the 16th of September, he 
anchored his ships in a stream to which he gave the 
name of St. Croix. In the angle formed by the tribu- 
tary and the great river, stood the town of Sladacona, 
the dwelling-place of a friendly tribe, who had afforded 
them shelter and furnished them food ; thence an 
irregular slope ascended to a lofty hight of table land. 
From this eminence a bold headland frowned over the 
St. Lawrence, formiitg a rocky wall of three hundred 
feet in hight. 
9 



98 THE KOMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

At this time, most of the country above their fort of 
shelter was fresh from the hand of the Creator. Far 
as the eye could reach, the dark forest spread, over hill 
and valley, mountain and plain, up to the craggy peaks, 
down to the blue water's edge, along the gentle slopes 
of the rich isle of Bacchus ; and even from projecting 
rocks and in fissures of the lofty precipice, the deep 
green mantle of the summer foliage hung its graceful 
folds. In the dim distance, north, south, east and west, 
where mountain rose above mountain in tumultuous 
variety of outline, it was still the same — one vast leafy 
veil concealed the virgin face of nature from the stran- 
ger's sight. On the eminence commanding this scene 
of wild but magnificent beauty, a prosperous city now 
stands. The patient industry of man has felled that 
dense forest, tree by tree, for miles and miles around, 
and where it stood rich fields rejoice the eye ; the once 
silent waters of the great river below now surge against 
hundreds of stately ships. Commerce has enriched this 
spot ; art adorned it ; a memory of glory endears it to 
every British heart. But the name of Quebec still 
remains unchanged, as the savage first pronounced it 
to the white stranger; it stands to-day among the 
proudest mementoes of Canadian story. 

Far away from home, Cartier busied himself in 
exploring the country, in studying the language, and 
learning the habits of the natives. The hill is yet 
marked by a Catholic monument, where, in the morn- 
ing of our national antiquity, this devoted Catholic 
gathered around him the sick and infirm, the lame 
and blind, read to them aloud a part of the Gospel of 
St. John, made the sign of the cross over the sufferers, 



EM AMERICAN HISTORY. 99 

and presented them with cbapleta and other holy sym- 
bols. He then prayed earnestly that the poor savages 
might he freed from the night of ignorance and infidel- 
ity. The result of this expedition was in the main 
disastrous. Many of the crew had fallen a prey to the 
scurvy and other diseases. The impaired health of the 
remainder, the privations they had endured, the poverty 
of their condition, all tended to cool the ardor of those 
who might otherwise have wished to follow up their 
discoveries. Happily for civilization, the reports of 
Cartier produced a favorable impression upon some of 
the more powerful and wealthy in France. The pious 
Catholic, most of all, strove to impress upon the King 
the glory and merit of extending the blessed knowledge 
of a Saviour to the dark and hopeless heathen of the 
West. Expedition after expedition set sail, all for the 
same object, viz : the discovery of gold ; these, starting 
out in a race which had for its goal suspended empire, 
wealth and fame, one after another saw the prize fade 
imperceptibly away, involving each and all in a common 
ruin, and were never heard of more. Thus, for many 
a year the stormy Atlantic swallowed up all the bright 
hopes of founding a new nation in America; for since 
daring men like these had failed, none others might be 
expected to succeed. As our eye wanders over the his- 
tory of the Old World, we learn the secret of defeat 
which met so many enthusiastic discoverers, who desired 
to be equipped and fitted out, that they might win the 
goal and get the prize. War was raging on the Eastern 
continent, sweeping into oblivion cherished schemes of 
acquisition of unknown territory, in the desire to pre- 
serve the power and retain the possessions at home. 



100 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

Charles V, of Germany, and Francis I, of France, had 
been battling for honor, for territory, and a name. 
When death caused them to exchange the sword for a 
shroud, their descendants, no wiser for experience, con- 
tinued the contest with renewed energy and with more 
determined zeal. The Reformation, headed by Luther, 
had taken root in every province, and was causing an 
earthquake, which, shaking kingdoms to their center, 
threatened the occupants of thrones. For a long time 
in the heart of France the Huguenots had been gaining 
strength and importance. Toward them the canons of 
the church and the batteries of kings had been turned ; 
but still they lived and worshiped God. Boldly their 
leader stepped forth, during the reigns of Francis II 
and Charles IX, while France was convulsed with civil 
war, and America was forgotten, and labored manfully , 
to protect and faithfully to cheer them in the dark hour 
of their calamitous history. His name was Gaspard de 
Coligny. During the reign of Henry II, he had been 
the first to press upon the king the importance of ob- 
taining a footing in South America, and dividing the 
magnificent prize with the Portuguese monarch. This 
celebrated man was convinced that an extensive system 
of colonization was necessary for the glory and tran- 
quility of France. He purposed the settlement in the 
New World should be founded exclusively by persons 
holding that reformed faith to which he was so deeply 
attached, and thus would be provided a refuge for those 
driven from France by religious proscription and per- 
secution. 

It is believed that Coligny's magnificent scheme 
comprehended the possession of the St. Lawrence and 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 101 

the Mississippi, gradually colonizing the banks of these 
great rivers into the depths of the continent, till the 
whole of North America, from the Gulf of the St. 
Lawrence to the Gulf of Mexico, should be hemmed in 
by this gigantic line of French outposts. Had this 
scheme succeeded, the history of America would have 
differed materially in many points. The free principles 
and free hopes of such a people would have made them 
honorable competitors with the colonists of New England. 
English supremacy must have yielded before the pro- 
gressive march of France. New France would then 
have been colonized by a people, instead of a govern- 
ment. This would have been their asylum, their home, 
their country. Their exertions would have been put 
forth for Canada, not for France ; whereas, in Canada, 
men of intellect, influence and wealth were only the 
agents of the mother country. They fulfilled their 
duties with zeal and ability, but they ever looked to 
France for honor and approbation, and longed for a 
return to her shores as their best reward. They were 
in the colony but not of it. They strove vigorously to 
repel invasion, to improve agriculture, and to encourage 
commerce, for the sake of France, but not for Canada. 
The state was everything, the people nothing: Finally, 
as a natural result, when the power of the state was 
broken by a foreign foe, there remained no power of the 
people to supply its place ; and on the day that the 
French armies ceased to resist, Canada was a peaceful 
province of British America. 

This proposition, like others which succeeded, met 
with no cordial sympathy or support from the throne ; 
and the hopes of the Protestants and, I may say, the 



102 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

best interests of France were broken and killed by the 
awful massacre of St. Bartholomew, where he fell a 
sacrifice to his faith, and a martyr to truth. 

In 1603, De Monts, a Calvinist, succeeded to the 
powers and privileges of Pierre du Guaston, the com- 
mander of a trading expedition to Quebec. This 
commission was even more extensive, and the star of 
hope again shone forth upon the Protestant world from 
the tempest-driven heavens. Jesuits again opposed him, 
and he was only able to obtain the freedom of religious 
faith for himself and his followers in America, providing 
that the Roman Catholic worship should be established 
among the natives. History informs us that even his 
opponents admitted the honesty and patriotism of his 
character, and bore witness to his courage and ability ; 
he was, nevertheless, unsuccessful, for the jealousy 
excited by the doctrines of the reformer involved him 
in ruinous embarrassment. The Huguenots of France 
continued to hope against hope ; they were ever willing 
to embark in any enterprise that should redound to the 
glory of their country, providing they were allowed 
religious liberty. They seemed never to forget the hope 
excited in their breasts fifty years before by the great 
Coligny, which looked ever forward to a refuge from 
religious persecution in the forest sanctuary of America. 
They followed brave and true leaders to Acadia, Florida 
and South America, until Jesuitical intrigues and a 
bigoted zeal deprived one and another of their leaders 
of the commission which gave them safety, support and 
defense. 

In 1627, Champlain, zealous for the Roman faith, 
procured a decree forbidding the free exercise of the 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 103 

reformed religion in French America. Seven years 
prior to this last date, in 1 Gl } 0, a handful of Puritan 
refugees landed upon Plymouth rock, hearing in their 
hands the Bible and the charter of their rights, u free- 
dom to worship God." It was winter on the earth when 
they approached these shores, but a brighter heaven 
never spanned their souls with its cerulean arch. The 
scowling sky above their heads, the frozen earth beneath 
their feet, and, sorest of all, the unacknowledged love 
of that venerable land which they had abandoned for- 
ever, made their trial bitter : but hope flooded their 
path with light, the freedom of conscience gave them 
quiet, and the food of heaven, gained by prayer and 
secured by love, gave sustenance to their spirits. 
Around them were their wives, their children, and their 
scanty stores. Before them, the dark, unleveled fore 
laden with snow and black with thickness, and yonder 
in the deep, dense thicket was the prowling savage; 
yet the unwritten sentiment, penned by our Longfellow, 
a lineal descendant, which says : 

" Trust no future, howe'er pleasant, 
Let the dead Past bury its dead ; 
Act — act in the living Fresent, 
Heart within and God o'erhea 1." 

made them happy. A brighter morning soon broke in 
upon them. " The snowy desert changed into a fair 
scene of life and vegetation. The woods rang with the 
cheerful sound of the axe ; the fields were tilled hope- 
fully, the harvest gathered gratefully." Other vessels 
followed in the wake of the trusty Mayflower. Their 
numbers swelled to hundreds, thousands, tens of thou- 
sands. They built the church side by side with the 



104 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

school-house ; they preached a pure faith to the Indians ; 
they had neither rich nor poor, and, in the words of 
another, they admitted of no superiority save in their 
own gloomy estimate of merit ; they persecuted all 
forms of faith different from that which they themselves 
held ; and yet they would have died rather than suffer 
the religious interference of others. Far from seeking 
or accepting aid from the government of England, they 
patiently tolerated their nominal dependence only be- 
cause they were virtually independent. For protection 
against the savage ; for relief in pestilence and famine ; 
for help to plenty and prosperity, they trusted alone to 
God, and to their own right hand on earth. 

It seems necessary to proceed thus far with the his- 
tory of French and English colonization, in order to 
mark the point where the paths of their history began 
to diverge — the one winding to an eminence never be- 
fore reached — an eminence which renders it the city 
of the nations and the light of the political word ; while 
the other, from this date, viz: 1627, when religious 
freedom was denied to the French colonists, began to 
descend from the common level into comparative obscu- 
rity, until its light has been quenched and lost in 
the brilliant radiance which the sun of freedom poured 
in upon it — that at a glance it might be seen how the 
principles which have rendered the history of New Eng- 
land bright and glorious were crushed beneath the heel 
of a bigoted despotism in New France — that the fact 
might be developed which forms a key to interpret the 
dark and disgraceful history which enshrouds her past 
with gloom, and which hangs over her present the al- 
most unbroken pall of a blinding ignorance ; and that 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 105 

explains th<> strange problem which presents itself to 
the eye, when it beholds on one side of the river St. 
Lawrence millions of happy men, distinguished for their 
freedom, their intelligence, and their liberal principles, 
while, on the opposite shore, three-fourths of the popu- 
lation are immersed in Romish superstitions, ignorant 
of letters, of freedom, and of truth. 

With these preliminary steps taken, we now stand 
upon the threshold of our subject. Would that it were 
a goodlier superstructure that invites our inspection. 
Would that the eye could discern a difference between 
its imagery and that which renders Italy poor and mean 
— which renders her blue sky and green hills, her glo- 
rious memories and bright renown, a sad comment ary 
and fitting reproof to that church and those principles 
which have caged her spirit and fettered her progress. 

Tn 1608, Champlain founded Quebec. He obtained 
a charter for his colony, and having, in 1614, enga_ 
some wealthy merchants of St. Malo, Rouen and Rochelle 
in an association for the support of the colony, through 
the assistance of the Prince Conde, Viceroy of France, 
he obtained letters patent of incorporation for the com- 
pany. The temporal welfare of the settlement being 
thus placed upon a secure basis, Champlain, who was a 
zealous Catholic, next devoted himself to obtain spirit- 
ual aid. By his entreaties four Recollects were pre- 
vailed upon to undertake the mission. These were the 
first ministers of the Catholic religion settled in Can- 
ada. They reached Quebec in the beginning of April, 
1615, accompanied by Champlain, who. however, at once 
proceed to Montreal, in company with Father Joseph le 
Caron. There they found the Huron and other allied 



106 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

tribes preparing for an expedition against the Iroquois, 
and having injudiciously joined in the quarrel in which 
they had no concern, they not only injured their cause, 
but lost the confidence of the Indians, and "were com- 
pelled, for want of a guide, to remain among them 
during the winter as unwilling guests. It is recorded 
that, in 1616, a signal service was rendered to the 
colony by a worthy priest. A general conspiracy had 
been entered into by the Indian tribes surrounding and 
adjacent to the place known as Three Eivers, where, as 
a missionary, he had been engaged in the conversion of 
the savages, and happily had so far gained their esteem, 
that some of his converts revealed to him the plot. 
Duplessys contrived with consummate ability to gain 
over some of the principal Indians — to make advances 
toward a reconciliation with the white men — and by 
degrees succeeded in arranging a treaty, and in caus- 
ing two chiefs to be given up as hostages for its 
observance. 

Fresh and more appalling dangers menaced the 
colony in 1621. The Iroquois attacked the French 
outposts, seized one of the Eecollets in their retreat — 
William Paulin — tied him to a stake, and were about 
to burn him alive, when they were persuaded to make 
an exchange of prisoners. The Hurons, disgusted with 
the French rule, proposed to detach themselves from 
their friendship, and unite with the Iroquois for their 
destruction. Caron and two other priests again averted 
the danger, and reconciled the discontented. Cham- 
plain returned to France to plead for aid to withstand 
the determined attacks of a common enemy. On his 
arrival he found that the vice royalty of France had 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 107 

been purchased by Henry de Sevi, Duke de Ventadour, 
with the view of promoting the spiritual welfare of 
Canada, and the general conversion of the heathen In- 
dians to the Christian faith. He had himself long re- 
tired from the strife and troubles of the world, and 
entered into holy orders. Being altogether under the 
influence of the Jesuits, he considered them as the 
means given by Heaven for tLe accomplishment of his 
views. 

During the years 1625 — ; 6, Father Lollemont, with 
many other Jesuits, reached Quebec, accompanied by 
tradesmen and artizans, which enabled the infant settle- 
ment soon to assume the appearance of a town. During 
this year the Huguenots were deprived of all their former 
privileges, stripped of power, and left naked among their 
enemies. These, driven as refugees, sought an asylum 
in New England, and, resolving to procure what of right 
belonged to them, in 1628 they commenced that series 
of hostilities, which, in 1629, resulted in the surrender 
of Canada to the British. When the English took pos- 
session they treated the inhabitants with such good faith 
and humanity, that none of the conquered left the coun- 
try. History informs us that when the French received 
the news of the loss of Canada, opinion was much divided 
as to the wisdom of seeking to regain the captured set- 
tlement. Champlain, and the more eager of the Catho- 
lics, urged France not to give up the country where the 
light of religion was dawning upon the darkness of 
heathen ignorance. Their solicitations were successful, 
and France regained her possessions at the treaty of St. 
Germain du Loge. Up to this period no permanent 
effects had resulted from the proselytism of the Recollets. 



108 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

Few of the natives had been converted, and the education 
of the youth had been neglected or interrupted by the 
continued scene of strife that raged in the colony. Still, 
the sentiment of religion became strengthened among 
the settlers, and in 1633 the idea was adopted of found- 
ing a college at Quebec, for the education of youth 
and the conversion of the Indians, and six thousand 
crowns of gold were contributed by Eene Eobault, as a 
donation to forward the object. In 1635 the foundation 
of the building was laid by its noble patron, to the joy 
of the French colonists. It was at this time that Cham- 
plain, the founder of Quebec, and the Governor of the 
colony, died. By all he was and is considered as a brave, 
high-minded, and wise man. Gifted with high ability, 
upright, active, and chivalrous, he was at the same time 
eminent for his zeal for the church, and in conforming 
by life and action to the dictates of conscience, and the 
teachings of his spiritual advisers. To him belongs the 
glory of planting the Eoman Catholic religion, and civili- 
zation, among the snows of those northern forests — during 
his life, indeed, a feeble germ ; but, sheltered by his vigor- 
ous arm, nursed by his tender care, the root struck deep. 
Little more than two centuries have passed since the 
faithful servant went to rest upon the field of his noble 
toils, and now a million and a half of people, professing 
his religion, dwell in peace upon that munificent territory, 
which his zeal and wisdom first redeemed from the deso- 
lation of the wilderness. Since that time it has again 
changed hands, and the British flag is now unfurled from 
the hights of Quebec. 

A writer, in speaking of this fact, says : " The closing 
scene of French dominion in Canada was marked by 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 109 

circumstances of deep and peculiar interest. Within a 
period comparatively brief we see the birth, the growth, 
and the catastrophe of a nation. The flag of France is 
erected at Quebec by a handful of hardy adventurers ; a 
century and a half passed, and that flag is lowered to 
a foreign foe before the sorrowing eyes of a Canadian 
people ; for from the earliest time the ostensible object 
of settlement, at least that holding the most prominent 
place in all acts and charters, was to extend the Catholic 
religion, and to minister to the supposed glory of God. 

At first, the church and the civil government leaned 
upon each other for mutual support and assistance ; but, 
after a time, when neither of the powers found them- 
selves troubled with popular opposition, their union grew 
less intimate, their interests differed, jealousies ensued, 
and finally they became antagonistic orders in the com- 
munity. The mass of the people, more devout than 
intelligent, sympathised with the priesthood. This sym- 
pathy did not, however, interfere with unqualified sub- 
mission to the government. 

" The Canadians were trained to implicit obedience to 
their rulers, spiritual and temporal. These rulers ven- 
tured not to imperil their absolute authority by educa- 
ting their vassals. It is true there were a few semina- 
ries and schools under the zealous administration of the 
Jesuits ; but even that instruction was unattainable by 
the general population. Those who walked in the moon- 
light which such reflected rays afforded, were not likely 
to become troublesome as sectarians or politicians. Much 
credit for sincerity cannot be given to those who professed 
to promote the education of the people, when no printing 



110 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

press was ever permitted in Canada, during the govern- 
ment of France. 

" It is true, that Canada was altogether free from dis- 
sent. Those differing with her in faith, were excluded, 
and there were none to persecute, save those who were 
detected by Jesuitical cunning, and these were banished. 
Hopelessly fettered in the chains of metropolitan power, 
she was also undisturbed by political agitation. But 
this calm, as has been remarked, was more the stillness 
of stagnation, than the tranquillity of content. Without 
a press — without a semblance of popular representation 
— there hardly remained other alternatives than tame 
submission or open mutiny. By hereditary habit and 
superstition, the Canadians were trained to the first, and 
by weakness and want of energy, they were incapacitated 
for the last. At length the scepter passed from the 
loosened grasp of the French, and the English lion's 
vigorous tread shook the national slumber, and the 
nation awoke to a brighter destiny, and a happier exist- 
ence. The altars of the Protestant faith were rebuilt, 
printing presses were established ; educational interests 
were advanced by the fostering care of a government 
distinguished for its liberal patronage of science and the 
arts. The Canada of the French is forgotten, when we 
reflect upon the prosperous condition of the Canada of 
the English. There is but one monument of French 
dominion remaining : that is the large number of the 
Catholic faith, as bigoted and ignorant as those of yore. 
But this, thank God, is fast disappearing before the 
march of knowledge, and the progress of truth. The 
banner of Jesus has been unfurled ; the light of truth is 



IX AMERICAN HISTORY. Ill 

dispersing the clouds of darkness, and hundreds and 
thousands of the deluded and priest-ridden Canadians are 
emerging from their retreats, and are shouting aloud 
the liosannahs of salvation." 

Let us turn from Canada, and follow the Jesuits in 

their wanderings from Quebec across the continent, 
along the rivers, over the mountains, and through the 
valleys of this fairest and most privileged republic. 

" The Jesuit missionaries," remarks a Catholic his- 
torian, 4< became the first discoverers of the greatest part 
of the interior of this continent. They were the first 
Europeans who formed a settlement on the coast of 
Maine, and among the first to reach it from the St. 
Lawrence. They first explored the Saguenay, discovered 
Lake St. John, and led the way overland from Quebec 
to Hudson's Bay. It is to them that we owe the dis- 
covery of the rich and inexhaustible springs of Onondaga. 
Within ten years of their second arrival, they had com- 
pleted the examination of the country of Lake Superior 
to the Gulf, and founded several villages of Christian 
neophytes on the borders of the upper lakes. While 
the intercourse of the Dutch was yet confined to the 
Indians in the vicinity of Fort Orange, and five years 
before Elliott, of Xew England, had addressed a single 
word to the Indians within six miles of Boston harbor, 
the French missionaries planted the cross at Sault Ste. 
Marie, whence they looked down on the Sioux country 
and the valley of the Mississippi. The vast unknown 
West now opened its prairies before them. It is to the 
letters of these missionaries, that the world is now 
indebted for the record of their trials, deprivations and 
achievements." These accounts were published in Eu- 



112 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

rope, year after year, in the same epistolary form in 
which they were written. O'Callagan has remarked 
that it was fortunate for the world that " the early 
missionaries were men of learning and observation. 
They felt deeply the importance of their position, and 
while acquitting themselves of the duties of their calling, 
carefully recorded the progress of events around them." 
For our present purpose they have been invaluable. 
Without these letters it would have been impossible to fol- 
low their steps, lost as they were from the sight of men. 
The student of history would seldom meet with their 
names, had it not been that they linked them to the 
memories of the age by the narratives of their exploits. 
Led by these, it is easy to follow them, at this remote 
period, through trackless forests, among tribes of savages 
long since extinct — their names even lost in the deep 
oblivion of the past — names which would now be irre- 
trievably gone, had not these wandering men placed 
them upon the bark of history, which safely and surely 
rides the tempest-tossed ocean of time. 

In 1649, a missionary reports that the hounds of war 
were again let loose, to desolate and destroy the cherished 
hopes of years. " The war proved fatal to the allies of 
the French. By 1650 all Upper Canada was a desert, 
and not a mission — not a single Indian — was to be 
found, where, but a few years before, the cross towered 
in each of the many villages, and hundreds of fervent 
Christians gathered around their fifteen missionaries. 
The earth still reeked with the blood of the pastor and 
his flock ; six missionary fathers had fallen by the hands 
of the Iroquois ; another had been fatally mutilated in 
their hands. But scarce was there a ray of peace, when 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 113 

the survivors were again summoned to the west — a 
field opened on Lake Superior. Thence, hearing of the 
great river in the dim distance, one after another leaving 
Lake Superior, strove to reach its shores, as, borne 
along by the fugitive Hurons, fleeing before the enraged 
Iroquois, they plunged through wood and waste, over 
cliffs and mountains, seeking to escape destruction and 
find repose. Tidings told them of its beauty, depth and 
grandeur, as pouring forth toward the Gulf or Pacific, 
they knew not which, the artery of a world. In 
1670-71, Father Dablon speaks thus of the river : M To 
the South, flows the great river, which the Indians call 
the Mississippi, which can have its mouth only in the 
Florida sea. Some Indians assure us that tiiis great 
river is so beautiful, that, more than three hundred 
leagues from its mouth, it is larger than that which 
flows by Quebec. They say, moreover, that all this vast 
extent of country is nothing but prairies, without trees 
or woods, which obliges the inhabitants of those forts to 
use turf and sun-dried dung for fuel, till you come about 
twenty leagues from the sea. There the forests begin 
to appear again. Some warriors of this country who 
have descended to its mouth, assure us that they saw 
men like the French, who were splitting trees with 
long knives, some of whom had their houses on the 
water : also, that along this great river are various 
towns of different nations, languages and customs, who 
all make war on each other. Some are situated on the 
river side, but most of them inland, continuing thus up 
to the nation of the Xadanessi, who are scattered over 
more than a hundred leagues of Country." 

Thus were the great features of the Mississippi, the 
10 



114 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

nature of the country, the habits of the distant tribes 
described, their languages learned, and their modes of 
life studied by the Jesuits long before any other white 
man thought of penetrating the pathless wild. With 
them discovery was a mania. They tried, at times, to 
train the untaught savage to recognize a God, but, like 
Cortez and Pizarro, they were unsuccessful. They 
seldom baptized any but the dying, or those infants with 
whom life was but a transient, pilgrim-staying hut for a 
night. They treated the Indians kindly — for the most 
part sought not to amass wealth by a traffic in their 
wares ; they lived to learn and do good. Their clothing 
was poor and plain, their food oftentimes acorns, and 
their habits of life abstemious and frugal. The doctrine 
of penance and endurance taught by the church was 
practised in their lives. They have been the patrons of 
discovery, the fact-gatherers of the wilderness, the 
benefactors of the world. 

It was a triumph of an age — the discovery and ex- 
ploration of the Mississippi and its tributary streams. 
This was, however, accomplished in 1680, by French 
missionaries. Let us take a hasty glance at their route, 
remembering that these mighty rivers and inland seas 
were passed and cut, not by the keels of steamers which 
move like arrows on their way, but by bark canoes, 
rowed by their own and native hands, threatened by 
storms, hunger and the watery grave. Passing from 
Quebec, they crossed Lake Ontario ; sailed up the river 
Niagara; carried their vessels upon their shoulders 
round the Falls ; launched them upon the river ; rowed 
against current and head winds ; struck out into the 
blue Lake Erie ; "pressed up the Detroit river, through 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 115 

Lake Sfc. Clair and its river; on still they went, up 
Lake Huron, on, through the straits and river St. Mary, 
into Lake Superior ; from thence, amid the wildest 
scenery, and urged forward by ardent hopes, still pushed 
on to the opposite shore, and from its farthest ex- 
tremity, landing upon the cold, bleak shore, among 
unknown tribes, they launched the tiny skiff upon the 
St. Croix, pursued their way to the Mississippi, and on, 
on they journeyed, passing the Wisconsin, Illinois, Mis- 
souri, and Ohio, down to the Gulf of Mexico. Indeed, 
this was a gigantic undertaking. It was nobly achieved. 
We, who stand upon the decks of our steamers, or whirl 
on through states and continents with lightning speed 
— who complain of the dust of travel and the perplex- 
ities of delay, which hinder us from going from Chicago 
to New York perhaps an hour — can form no conception 
of the suffering endured and hardship and toil mastered 
by these veteran pioneers, who mapped out for our use 
a forest world. Oftentimes enslaved by conquering 
tribes, they, by performing remarkable cures, were 
taken for supernatural beings, and became the medi- 
cine men of the tribes through which they passed, and 
with as little difficulty as the Indian jugglers estab- 
lished their reputation ; and thus they saved their lives. 
With their persons thus guarded by superstitious awe, 
they rambled across to the Gulf of California, tra- 
versing the bison plains and the abode- towns of the 
half-civilized natives of Xew Mexico, perched on their 
rocky bights. 

De Vaca traversed America from sea to sea. His 
travels and explorations remain in the distant twilight of 
history as those of the first European known to have stood 



116 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

by the mighty Mississippi, and to have launched his boat 
upon his waters; but his shipwrecks shed no new light 
on that vast tract since explored. The voice of the 
European missionaries sounded the advent of a new era. 
The continent, which had for ages been shrouded in the 
darkness of its own creation, entered upon a new exist- 
ence when first the white man smote the tyrant Forest 
with the sword of conquest — the woodman's axe. 
Thenceforward all was progress. We might now trace 
the labors of those who explored each tributary of the 
central river, and watch the progress of each rising 
town ; we might show how and when forests were leveled, 
rivers bridged, mountains tunneled, cities built, and 
continents and empires netted w T ith railways ; but this 
belongs to the history of a nation, not of a few individ- 
uals, who lived, labored and died without successors — 
without having stamped the signet of their genius upon 
anything around them — without having endeared 
themselves to any save those intimately associated with 
them, and oftentimes they were by these abused. It 
seems strange that so little is known of these men. 
The history of their sufferings, touching as it is, has 
been comparatively neglected. The letters which these 
laborers wrote more than a century ago, when camping 
in the wilderness or sharing the w r igwams of the rude 
savage, are valuable ; for they portray their own views 
and feelings. They lead us, as no one else does, into 
the inner and private life of our aborigines. 

This race is nearly extinct. Few are the traces that 
remain of that once numerous people. Their existence 
will soon be of the past. They have left no permanent 
impression on the constitution of the great nation which 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 117 

now spreads over their country. No trace of their 
blood, language or manners may be found among their 
haughty successors. The mysterious decree of Provi- 
dence, which has swept them away, may not be judged 
by human wisdom. As certainly as their magnificent 
forests fell before the advancing tide of civilization, 
they fell also. They withered alike under the Upas 
shade of European protection and before the deadly 
storm of European hostility. As the snow in spring, 
they melted away, stained, tainted, trampled down. 
To a great extent the Jesuits were accessory to this 
fatal death-blow, which, in the infancy of the white 
settlements, they received. The Hurons, by means of 
the Jesuits, became the allies of the French : the Iro- 
quois of the English at times, but generally they 
remained a powerful tribe by themselves. The Hurons 
were stimulated to fight for defense and for conquests. 
Powder and bullets were soon introduced into general 
use. The strife raged with fiercer earnestness. Rival 
tribes joined in the affray. The whites led them on; 
the missionaries bore to distant tribes the fire-brand, 
and kindled the flame of war where had been peace. 
The flames raged more furiously, until, like the dried 
leaves of autumn, or the parched-up grass on the 
boundless prairies, they have been consumed, and are 
now no more. With the race went their genius and 
many of the brightest trophies of Catholicism. The 
history of Jesuit missions, interesting in itself, teaches 
a sad but important lesson. Our brightest earthly 
hopes are oftentimes the earliest to fade. Look over 
the world and read the history of Jesuit missions. 
After one or two generations they have always come to 



118 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

naught. There is not a recorded instance of their per- 
manency, or their spreading, each generation, wider and 
deeper, like our own missions in India, in the Sandwich 
Islands, and among the Cherokees. Thus it has been 
in China, Japan, South America and our own land, 
For centuries the Jesuit foreign missionaries have been 
like those beating the air; and yet greater devotion to 
the cause than theirs has never been seen since the 
apostles' days. Why, then, was this result? If the 
" blood of the martyrs be the seed of the church/' why 
is this the only instance in which il has proved not so ? 
Must there not have been something wrong in the 
whole system — some grievous errors mingled with their 
teaching, which thus denied them a measure of success 
proportioned to their efforts ? 

The Jesuits of the wilderness sleep in a common 
grave with the different tribes they came to redeem 
from the darkness of Paganism. The black waters of 
oblivion, restless at first, have now become calm, and a 
waveless sea gives them a sepulcher with the dimly 
known and the long lost. The wilderness has given 
way before the march of industry and skill ; the dark- 
ness of Paganism has been displaced by the light of 
Gospel truth, the wigwam by the city, the canoe by the 
steamer, the Indian path by the railway, the Indian by 
the white man, and the Jesuit by the minister of right- 
eousness and truth. This is true of our Union; in 
Canada, relics of superstition still remain. The Cana- 
dian college, under the supervision of the Jesuits, has 
been for centuries a barrier to freedom of thought and 
action. The boy was trained to sing the evening and 
morning chant ; to chant the To Deum and go through 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 119 

with the routine of Church duties, while the broad 
domain of thought was fenced in. He could only see 
the mountains of error which hemmed it round, but 
was never permitted to stand upon their cloud-capped 
summits and survey the illimitable expanse of truth. 
The Jesuits' college was a place to forge fetters for the 
mind and heart — not the school to unlock them ; to 
befog the mind — not the spot where false impressions 
and notions and ideas were to be disabused and swept 
away by the magic wand of heavenly light. The boy 
came out into the world prepared for every tiling but 
the world. He knew not its language, and was igno- 
rant of its customs. For a time he tried to become 
familiar with the realities of life ; but every thing 
appearing to his untutored eye in a false light, he soon 
became disgusted with appearances, and sought the 
cloister for relief. He came forth like a man long 
withdrawn from the light of the sun, to find himself 
amid new and wonderful objects, which he can not 
grasp, because he is too busy with their contemplation. 
He remained stationary, like a stone that sinks to the 
bottom of a flowing river, and drags on his life like an 
oyster, knowing little of others and quite unknown to 
himself. But, if not carried beneath the surface at his 
debut, the wave may float him slowly onward, and after 
a while, like a drowning man, he will strike out for 
himself to reach a landing-place somewhere. 

In 1837 and 1 838, the young men of Canada rebelled, 
in the face of their clergy's denunciations, and threats of 
eternal punishment, if they bore arms against their sove- 
reign. Nevertheless, they fought for a time, boldly and 
fearlessly. At length they were defeated by superior 



120 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

forces : the mob was beaten by the soldiery ; the student, 
raving with madness, long smarting under colonial and 
priestly tyranny, was beaten into subjection by a handful 
of veterans. Moving spirits and followers, all had been 
brought up, in the schools of their childhood, to cringe 
and submit, like serfs, before the prestige of authority. 
The revolution broke their fetters, untied their pinions, 
and gave their spirits at least freedom. The victory 
they gained was by no means inconsiderable. Kesults 
which are diffusing a healthful influence over the insti- 
tutions and liberties of Canada, have followed rapidly in 
the wake of the political disturbances of 1837 — ? 8, and 
are manifesting themselves even where the clergy hold 
their sway. The innovating tendencies of the times are 
destroying the fortified prejudices of the long-ago ; and 
the clergy themselves are becoming impregnated with 
the spirit of an age upon which go ahead is everywhere 
written. Their educational system is being modified, so 
as to make a young man more a citizen, than a quasi 
Jesuit. Their establishments, convents as well as col- 
leges, are conducted with a more liberal discipline than 
formerly ; and the rising generation is growing up with 
lofty inspirations, in place of cringing instincts. The 
college at Quebec has lately been chartered into a uni- 
versity, where the highest and most thorough instruction 
will be given, instead of the one-sided drilling that had 
for years marked the collegiate course in Canada. The 
prison-like buildings of old have been abandoned for 
more prepossessing edifices, over which the gloom of the 
dungeon does not brood as formerly, when students were 
like galley-slaves, and teachers became taskmasters. The 
people are becoming alive to their own interests ; religious, 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 121 

commercial, and political intelligence is being dissemi- 
nated among the masses. The priests are no longer 
objects of dread or worship, but they are looked upon as 
men, full of imperfections, at the same time honest, and 
laborious. The Jesuit has doffed his robe and cowl in 
many places, and partakes more of the simplicity of the 
citizen. Yet the work is not all done. Mighty strug- 
gles and wrestlings have yet to be gone through, before 
the whole truth shall be acquired. The people are on 
the way. May God speed them. The school-house and 
the church are becoming alike dear. They are seeking 
after truth, and becoming delvers in science. The par- 
tition walls that separated the priest and laity, are being 
broken down. A man is measured by actual knowledge 
obtained. Pretension and delusion go togetli. 

In Canada, men are lighting their torch by the flame 
which burns brightly upon the altar of truth. This, 
blazing brightly, is lighting up their path, as they speed 
onward toward the given goal. Dissenters and laymen 
are wielding the pen in the world, and in the parliament. 
Shoulder to shoulder they march forward, as foes to igno- 
rance, to usage, and tradition. God's revealed word is 
becoming their counsel and guide. Normal schools for 
the multitude, and the universities for the aspiring, are 
being crowded by those who wish to prepare themselves 
for the responsibilities of life. The demand for edu- 
cated men is increasing. The breach, wide at first, is 
being filled by those, around whom cluster the fondest 
of their country's hopes. 

Jesuitism — which has mapped out this continent — 
which has built our towering cathedrals, and planted 
upon the banks of every stream, by the shore of every 
11 



122 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

lake, upon the mountain summit and in the valley 
gorge, the cross — which found America a wilderness — 
which followed to the tomb a mighty race — which has 
hoped and is still hoping to build up here a power that 
shall eclipse that reared beneath the sunniest sky of 
Europe — that power which acquires strength from ig- 
norance, and gathers hope from the nameless woes of 
millions — is doomed to meet with the bitterest disap- 
pointment ever to be recorded in history. Popery is 
strong in Europe, because her power was nourished by 
the barbarians of an age distinguished by its war- 
like feuds and unlettered men. Tinselry and show 
were the characteristics of her worship. Her devotees, 
noted for the power of their arm and the weakness of 
their head, were ready to fight, but were incapable of 
thought — were always willing to be led, but never 
dreamed of working out paths for themselves. They 
listened, for they could not read ; they worshiped they 
knew not what. Still the nations of Europe, for more 
than half a century, warred by sworcl and gallows-tree 
against the Jesuits. Portugal, under Pambal — Spain, 
under Avonda — France, under Louis XV — Austria, 
despite Maria Theresa — Naples, under Tamici, and even 
Eussia, under Catherine Second, strove to extinguish, in 
the heart of every European society, this secret, this fear- 
ful, this all-controlling, yet almost intangible depotism. 
They had at one time amassed the power and the wealth 
of the world. Their tracks still may be seen in Thibet, 
in inmost China, and in farthest Japan. They have 
drawn from either Indies inestimable wealth. They 
were always willing to become spies of aggressive gov- 
ernments in foreigu and barbarous lands. The weak 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 123 

French empire in India drew all its knowledge and 
power from the Jesuit missions. In America, while 
there was a French government, it found its chief sup- 
port in the strength of the Jesuit outposts. Xapoleon 
coveted their return to France, that he might enrich 
himself from their espionage. They once owned all 
South America, its herds, it temples, its mines, its 
treasures, its lands and its people. 

To Columbia free and intelligent men preceded them. 
They labor under every disadvantage. Schemes they 
call wise receive frowns and defeat. The masses, be- 
coming educated, forsake them by multitudes, and pro- 
test against their delusions ; while the press heralds to 
the world their discomfitures, discloses their nakedness, 
and publishes their secrets. Our railroads place Mont- 
real at the doors almost of Boston or New York. Yankee 
enterprise is invading the province with its dollars and 
cents, its labor-saving machines and steam engines. It 
finds less and less stubborn prejudices to contend against, 
but is everywhere received with open arms, like a friend 
and a deliverer. The darkness of the night is passing 
away. Catholicism is sinking into the grave. Religion, 
a free intelligence and pure faith, are destined to be 
planted upon the mound whose roots, gathering strength 
from the pregnant past, shall throw up a shoot fit to em- 
bellish the age — which shall form a monument to en- 
terprise — a waymark to freedom — a stepping-stone 
to happiness. 



124 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 



CHAPTER V. 

THE COLONIAL HISTORY OF THE UNITED 

STATES. 

Early settlement of Florida— Fernando de Soto— Discovery of the 
Mississippi— French Huguenots— Their persecution by the Span- 
iards— Gaspard de Coligny— His character— The slaughter of Pro- 
testants by Catholics in Florida — Massacre of St. Bartholomew. 

Scarcely had Fernando de Soto called off his blood- 
thirsty Catholic troops from massacring the ill-fated and 
unhappy Peruvian, when the tramp of his mailed cour- 
ser broke the solitude of the forests of Florida. The 
roar of cannon, and the clash of arms, the shriek of the 
wounded, and the wail of the despairing brave had not 
died away in distant echo upon the plain of Quito, and 
along the valleys of Mexico, ere the hoarse note of the 
war-bugle was drowning the din of battle which piled 
the dead warrior upon the hearths and altars of his 
native land. In 1 539 the strife commenced in the south 
of this republic, which ceased not till a free and happy 
race were banished from their homes, and driven from 
their father's graves. Just thirty-nine years after the 
first French vessel had cut the blue waters of the Gulf of 
St. Lawrence, and five years after Jacques Cartier had 
stood upon the proud battlements of Quebec, Soto set 
out for the conquest of Florida, which resulted in the 
discovery of the Mississippi, in the destruction of thous- 
ands of peaceful natives, in winning for himself an 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 125 

execrable name, and procuring not gold, but a grave — not 
the love of a hospitable race, which gave them a welcome, 
but their united curse. Of this expedition, Bancroft — 
who, by the way, has been called by Archbishop Hughes 
an impartial historian — says : " Everything was provided 
that experience in former invasions, and the cruelty of 
avarice could suggest ; chains for captives, and the instru- 
ments of a forge ; arms of all kind then in use, and 
bloodhounds as auxiliaries against the feeble natives. It 
was a roving expedition of gallant freebooters in quest 
of fortune. It was a romantic stroll of men, whom ava- 
rice rendered ferocious, through unexplored regions, over 
unknown paths ; wherever rumor might point to the resi- 
dence of some chieftain with more than Peruvian wealth, 
or the ill-interpreted signs of the ignorant natives might 
seem to promise a harvest of gold. The passion for cards 
now first raged among the groves of the South ; and 
often at the resting places, groups of listless adventurers 
clustered together to enjoy the excitement of desperate 
gaming. Eeligious zeal was also united with avarice. 
There were not only cavalry and foot soldiers, with all 
that belongs to warlike array, but twelve priests, beside 
other ecclesiastics, accompanied the expedition. Florida 
was to become Catholic during scenes of robbery and 
carnage. Ornaments, such as are used at the service of 
mass were carefully provided ; every festival was to be 
kept ; every religious practice to be observed. As the 
troops marched through the wilderness, the solemn pro- 
cessions which the usages of the church enjoined, were 
scrupulously instituted. Three years are passed amid 
sufferings and hardships which bent the iron spirit of the 
intrepid leader. Hundreds of poor natives are worn out 



126 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

by toil, by scourging and by famine ; brave men, and 
dashing knights, with their mettled steeds, lie along 
their beaten track ; the faithful missionary has performed 
the rites of sepulture over a large portion of the once 
proud band who pushed forward in search of gold. Fer- 
nando de Soto, no longer able to abate the confidence, or 
punish the temerity of the natives, falls a victim to a 
wasting melancholy, and with the remnant of his faithful 
followers still about him, he yields to their solicitations, 
appoints a successor, and dies. The survivors wander 
about in the deep, dense forests that skirt the Red river, 
until, desperate from defeat, they resolve to construct 
rude boats, and thus make their way to the Gulf of Mex- 
ico, leaving behind them the grave of hope, the monu- 
ment of which shall be the saddened memories of the 
wasting forms whitening beneath a tropic sun. Many 
of the Christians were dying : a frightful epidemic had 
seized the strangers ; chains were unforged, and the 
oppressed were permitted to go free, in order that nails 
might be wrought from their chains to construct the 
brigantines. Thus, with horse-meat and corn for food — 
with a beggared, robbed population around them — they 
embark, set sail, and finally pass into the Gulf of Mexico. 
Such was the history of those who came here in the early 
dawn of colonization. They failed. Religious zeal was 
more persevering. Louis Concello, a friar of the Domin- 
ican order, gained, through Philip II., then heir apparent 
in Spain, permission to visit Florida, and attempt the 
peaceful conversion of the natives. But missionaries had 
been there before. The cross had been planted. The 
Indians had heard the solemn chant, and had witnessed, 
and perhaps felt, the wrongs which priests had permitted 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 127 

in former days. They saw in every Spaniard, whether 
priest or soldier, an enemy ; and, following out their 
natural inclinations, when the missionaries reached Flor- 
ida, they found enemies and a tomb. Florida was aban- 
doned. Castilians had wet the soil with their blood, 
but they failed in securing themselves a home. The 
first permanent establishment of the Spaniards in Florida 
was the result of bigotry. 

Coligny, who had failed in founding a colony in 
Canada, still desired to establish a refuge for the 
Huguenots and a Protestant empire in America. The 
expedition which he now planned was entrusted to the 
command of John Ribault, of Dieppe, a brave man, of 
maritime experience, and a firm Protestant. He was 
attended by some of the best of the young French 
nobilitv, while brave veterans shared his fortunes. The 
feeble Charles IX conceded an ample commission, and 
the squadron set sail for the shores of North America. 
They reached the coast of Florida, left a colony at Port 
Royal, who in turn became disaffected, and returned 
to France. In the following vear Colio-ny renewed his 
solicitations for the colonization of Florida. A larger 
fleet than before was soon under way. They arrive at 
Port Royal, push on to the banks of the river May, and 
plant there the infant settlement. I need not relate 
the circumstances that surrounded this infant colony, 
nor need I tell how cordially they were welcomed by 
the natives — how this kindness was abused — how the 
granary of the provident savage was robbed of its scanty 
store — how famine stared them in the face. History 
has chronicled the mutinies which sprung up among the 
poorer emigrants, and of the mad passion for wealth 



128 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

which took possession of the majority, and drove them 
on to deeds of prodigality, shame and plunder. For, 
" though patriotism and religious enthusiasm had 
prompted the expedition, the inferior class of the colo- 
nists were dissolute men. These, obtaining the sanction 
of their leader, procured two vessels and began a career 
of piracy against the Spaniards that has left an inefface- 
able stain upon the character of the Protestant colony 
of Florid*." 

A year passed aw T ay, Their scarcity became extreme, 
and the friendship of the natives was forfeited by un- 
profitable severity. March, April and May passed, and 
no succor came. The fire of hope burned dimly. The 
colony despaired of aid, and resolved to return to France. 
Just then, Sir John Hawkins, the slave merchant, 
arrived, and soon displayed the most generous sympathy. 
Provisions were furnished freely. A vessel was relin- 
quished for their use. Preparations were continued, 
and the colony were on the eve of embarkation, when 
sails were descried bearing towards them. Ribault had 
arrived to assume the command, bringing with him 
supplies of every kind ; emigrants with their families, 
garden seeds, implements of husbandry and the various 
kinds of domestic animals. The French, now wild with 
joy, seemed about to acquire a home, and Calvinism to 
have become fixed in the inviting regions of Florida. 
Hope began to shed her light upon their pathway ; the 
dream of years was about to be realized. They be- 
thought themselves of friends and kindred suffering 
persecution and distress in France, while they were 
enjoying for the first time liberty of conscience and 
freedom from restraint. But, alas ! at this time a dark 



□I AMERICAN HISTORY. 129 

cloud began to gather in their sunny sky, and this 
happy people were doomed to suffer from Popish intole- 
rance ; for news of their arrival and prosperity had 
reached the Spanish court. Spain had never relin- 
quished that territory, where, if she had not planted 
colonies, she had buried many hundreds of her bravest 
sons. 

We now approach one of the bloodiest chapters in the 
Catholic history of America. Indians had been butch- 
ered by thousands ; temples had been plundered, and 
kino-s dethroned. Eiot and bloodshed had marked the 
Spaniards' march from Vera Cruz to Mexico — from the 
Isthmus of Darien to the palaces of the Inca ; but hith- 
erto the white man's blood had never been shed beneath 
the shadows of a forest world. 

Archbishop Hughes claims that " If civil, but especial- 
ly religious liberty be a dear and justly cherished 
privilege of the American people, the palm of having 
been the first to preach and practise it is due, beyond 
all controversy, to the Catholic colony of Maryland." 
He says: " The picture is not over-brilliant, but it is 
very fair. I will present it to you as drawn by the 
impartial pen of a Protestant historian, a native of New 
England, by the bye, of whose reputation she and the 
whole country may well be proud : I mean the Hon. 
George Bancroft." Dr. Hughes is deserving the thanks 
of the Protestant world for thus establishing the au- 
thority and reputation of Mr. Bancroft as an impartial 
historian ; for in replying to the arguments and asser- 
tions of Catholics, there is no difficulty so great to be 
encountered as to find a history that they will acknowl- 
edge as authority with them. Prove what you will 



130 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

from the Bible, they deny the authenticity of the work. 
Take down from your shelf any standard ecclesiastical 
history, and they will pronounce the author one-sided, 
partial, dishonest, &c. But here is the proof that 
Bancroft may be relied upon. He, then, shall be our 
authority in this chapter, and from him we shall prove 
that Catholics were the first to kindle on American soil 
the flame of persecution ; they were the first to murder 
in cold blood a happy, peaceable and inoffensive colony 
— not because they were Frenchmen, who had sought a 
home in the wilderness, but because they were Protest- 
ants. They were Huguenots, who, fleeing from perse- 
cution at home, sought an asylum in the New World. 

Pedro Melendez, whose bigotry had been nourished 
in the wars against the Protestants of Holland, was the 
instrument made use of by Philip II. , of Spain, for 
extinguishing the heresy of Calvinism in Florida. " It 
was on the day which the customs of Rome have conse- 
crated to the memory of one of the most eloquent sons 
of Africa, and one of the most venerated of the fathers 
of the church, that Melendez came in sight of Florida. 
For four days he sailed along the coast, uncertain where 
the French were established. On the fifth day he 
landed and gathered from the Indians accounts of the 
Huguenots." Discovering a fine bay and beautiful 
river, he gave it the name of St. Augustine, in honor 
of the saint on w r hose day he came upon the coast. It 
was on the 4th of September, 1565, that he discovered 
the French fleet lying at anchor near the homes of their 
brethren. " The French demanded his name as he 
rode up to them with menacing mem and threatening 
appearance. * I am Melendez, of Spain/ replied he ; 



rX AMERICAN HISTORY. 131 

* sent with strict orders from my King to gibbet and 
behead all the Protestants in these regions.' 

" The French, unprepared for action, cut their cables ; 
but the fleet had hardly left the harbor for the open 
sea, when a fearful storm arose, which lasted till Octo- 
ber, and wrecked every ship of the French fleet upon 
the Florida coast. The vessels were dashed upon the 
rocks about fifty miles from Fort Carolina ; most of the 
men escaped with their lives. The Spanish ships suf- 
fered, but not so severely, and the troops of St. Augus- 
tine were entirely safe. They knew that the French 
settlement was left in a defenseless state. With a 
fanatical indifference to toil, Melendez led his men 
through the lakes, marshes and forests that divided the 
St. Augustine from the St. John's, and, with a furious 
onset, surprised the weak garrison, who had looked only 
toward the sea for the approach of danger. After a 
short contest, the Spaniards were masters of the fort. 
A scene of carnage ensued ; soldiers, women, children, 
the aged, the sick, were alike massacred. ° ° Near- 
ly two hundred persons were killed. A few escaped 
into the woods, among them Loudonniere, Challus and 
Le Maque, who have related the horrors of the scene. 
But whither should they fly ? Death met them in the 
woods ; and the heavens, the earth, the sea, and men 
all seemed conspired against them. Should they sur- 
render, appealing to the sympathy of their conquerors ? 

* Let us/ said Challus, ; trust in the mercy of God, 
rather than of these men/ A few gave themselves up, 
and were immediately murdered. The others, after 
severest sufferings, found their way to the sea-side, and 
were received on board two small French vessels, which 



132 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

had remained in the harbor. The Spaniards, angry 
that any should have escaped, insulted the corpses of 
the dead with wanton barbarity. ° ° After the carnage 
was completed, mass was said, a cross was raised, and 
the site for a church selected on ground still smoking 
with the blood of a peaceful colony. The shipwrecked 
men were, in their turn, soon discovered. They were 
in a state of helpless weakness, wasted by their fatigues 
at sea, half-famished, destitute of water and food. 
Should they surrender to the Spaniards? Melendez 
invited them to rely on his compassion. The French 
capitulated, and were received among the Spaniards in 
such successive divisions as a boat could at once ferry 
across the intervening river. As the captives stepped 
upon the bank which their enemies occupied, their 
hands were tied behind them, and in this way they 
were marched toward St. Augustine, like a flock of 
sheep driven to the slaughter-house. As they ap- 
proached the fort a signal was given, and amid the 
sound of trumpets and drums, the Spaniards fell upon 
the unhappy men who had confided in their humanity, 
and who could offer no resistance. A few Catholics 
were spared ; some mechanics were reserved as slaves ; 
the rest were massacred, not as Frenchmen, but as 
Calvinists." The whole number of the victims of big- 
otry here and at the fort is said by the French to have 
been about nine hundred. The Spanish accounts di- 
minish the number of the slain, but not the atrocity 
of the deed. 

" Angry," says Bancroft, " that any should have es- 
caped, the Spaniards insulted the corpses of the dead 
with wanton cruelty. And to strengthen the force of his 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 133 

machinery, Melendez deemed it needful to fire his men 
with fanaticism. So, amid thick fogs, which arose from 
the ground where the hot blood still lay unabsorbed, 
the ensign of Popery was set up with the desecrated 
cross, and the scene of execution made the foundation for 
a new church edifice. " 

In God's providence, some few Protestants were spared, 
who addressed a letter to the French King, asking pro- 
tection. To it he turned a deaf ear. But a Roman 
Catholic and a citizen, by the name of Dominic de Gour- 
ges, inspired by the fiery vices of Spanish bigotry, 
M arose from privacy and retirement, which he had sought 
after a long and illustrious public service, and doffing 
the citizen's coat," took the sabre, and at his private 
cost equipped three ships, and with a hundred and fifty 
men, under pretense of sailing for the coast of Guinea, 
secretly embarked for Florida. He surprised Fort Caro- 
lina, now occupied by Spaniards, took it, and with a 
speedy stroke avenged the wrongs of the murdered dead, 
leaving over them the inscription, " Not as to Spaniards 
and warriors, bid as to robbers, traitors, and murderers. 19 

Gaspard de Coligny, of whom mention has often been 
made, was born, February 16th, 1516, at Chatillon sur 
Loing. He was the head of an ancient and honored 
house, and was one of the most remarkable men of his 
time. He was early inured to military life. At the 
death of Henry II., he espoused the cause of the Calvin- 
ists against the Guises, and in the battles which desolated 
France during that melancholy period of civil war, he 
greatly distinguished himself as a soldier ; w^hile his 
untiring exertions, put forth to shield the oppressed 
Huguenots from persecution at home, and in furnishing 



134 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

them with an asylum in America, made his name dear 
to all classes seeking religious freedom and engagement. 
By his austere manner, and the purity of his life, he 
illustrated the doctrines of the gospel, and became a 
shining mark for the arrows of papal hate. " The decent 
order of his household, and their scrupulous attention to 
the services of religion, formed a striking contrast to the 
licentious conduct of too many of the Catholics, who, 
however, were as prompt as Coligny to do battle in 
defense of their faith. In early life he was the gay com- 
panion of the Duke of Guise. But as the Calvinists, or 
Huguenots, were driven by persecution to an indepen- 
dent, and even a hostile position, the two friends, widely 
separated by opinion, and by interest, were changed into 
mortal foes. That hour had not yet come. But the 
heresy that was soon to shake France to its center, was 
silently working under ground.* 

Peace at last put an end to civil broils, and Coligny 
appeared at Court, and was loaded with the caresses 
and presents of Charles IX., who soon after perfidiously 
planned and executed his murder. On the night of the 
24th of August, 1572, less than eight years after his 
brethren had been murdered, in cold blood, on the plains 
of Florida, Coligny, their illustrious defender and friend, 
fell a victim to the covert attacks of the same perfidious 
foe, whose bloody work has made the name of St. Bar- 
tholomew memorable in the annals of time. As attempts 
are made, even now r , by Catholics, to justify this barbar- 
ous deed, a plain historic statement will place before the 
reader, facts which evidence the utter worthlessness of 



Prescott's Philip II M vol. i., page 220. Russell's Modern Europe, 
▼ol. i., page 469. 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 135 

trerr aths, made with that pom • only guide 

is interest. For years a war bad been waged against 
Protestants in the Netherlands, who wete led by the 

noble William, Prince of Orange, who lost his life, in the 
prime of manhood, by an assassin's dagger, used by a 
votary of the church of Rome. As we have seen, 
Coligny and the Prince of Conde sided with the oppressed. 
Elizabeth, the Queen of England, threw her strong arm 
around the weak, and made the Protestant cause tri- 
umphant. At length a defensive alliance was concluded 
between France and England. " Charles IX. considered 
this treaty not only as the best artifice for blinding the 
Protestants, the conspiracy against whom was now ah; 
ripe for execution, but also a good precaution against the 
dangerous consequences to which that atrocious measure 
might expose him.'' 

Elizabeth, notwithstanding her penetration and expe- 
rience, and the Huguenots, though so often deluded, 
were deceived by the French King. In compliance with 
the invitation of Charles IX., the Admiral de Coligny, 
the Prince of Conde, and all the most considerable men 
of the Protestant party went cheerfully to Paris, to an 
in the ceremonies of the marriage of Margaret, the sis- 
ter of the King, to the young King of Navarre. Joy 
swelled every heart, for now it was supposed the union 
of their Protestant king with the sister of their persecu- 
tor, would allay all animosities. 

A few days after the marriage, Coligny was wounded 
by a shot from a window. This was regarded as an 
accident, and " the Court found means to quiet the sus- 
picions of the Huguenots, till the eve of St. Bartholomew, 
when a massacre commenced, to which there is nothing 



136 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

parallel in the history of mankind, either for the dissim- 
ulation that led to it, or the deliberate cruelty and bar- 
barity with which it was perpetrated. The Protestants, 
as a body, were devoted to destruction — the young King 
of Navarre and the Prince of Conde, only, being exempted 
from the general doom, on condition they should change 
their religion. Charles, accompanied by his mother, 
beheld from a window of his palace, this horrid massa- 
cre, which was chiefly conducted by the Duke of Guise. 
The royal guards were ordered to be under arms at the 
close of day ; the ringing of a bell was the signal, and 
the Catholic citizens who had been secretly prepared by 
their leaders for such a scene, zealously seconded the 
execution of the soldiery, imbruing their hands without 
remorse, in the blood of their neighbors, of their com- 
panions, and even of their relatives ; the King, himself, 
inciting their fury, by firing upon the fugitives, fre- 
quently crying, ' kill, MIV Persons of every condition, 
age, and sex, suspected of adhering to the reformed 
opinions, were involved in one undistinguishable ruin. 
About five hundred gentlemen, and men of rank, among 
whom was Coligny, with many other heads of the Pro- 
testant party, were murdered in Paris alone, and near 
ten thousand persons of inferior condition. The same 
barbarous orders were sent to all the provinces of the 
kingdom, and a like carnage ensued at Rouen, Lyons, 
Orleans, and several other cities. Sixty thousand per- 
sons are supposed to have been massacred in different 
parts of France." Medals were struck, bearing on one 
side, " Piety roused Justice," and on the other, " Cour- 
age in punishing Rebels," commemorating the day. In 
Rome, and in Spain, this massacre was the subject of 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 137 

rejoicing, and solemn thanks were returned to God for 
its success, under the name of the " Triumph of the 
Church Militant" 

Such was the course pursued by Catholics in Paris, 
after a most solemn compact had been entered into, to 
protect the oppressed Huguenots from a relentless perse- 
cution, which had been waged against them for thirty 
years. Coligny, the valiant defender of France against 
Philip II., of Spain, was rewarded by a treacherous 
king, beside whom Judas Iscariot was a nobleman, with 
assassination and death. France lost her best citizens, 
and received on her escutcheon a stain as imperishable as 
the records of time. This carried out the article of the 
creed, which reads, M that no faith shall be kept with 
heretics" 

" Such are thy tender mercies, tyrant Rome ! 
The rack, the faggot, or the hated creed ; 
Fearless amid thy folds fierce "wolves may roam, 
While stainless sheep upon thy altars bleed ! " 

In 1580, Augustin Ruyz, a Franciscan friar, inflamed 
by that missionary spirit which animated the Spanish 
ecclesiastics, undertook an exploration of the interior 
regions North of Mexico. Kuyz was followed, in 1581, 
by Antonio de Espejio, with a body of soldiers and Indians. 
He completed the exploration, and gave to this country 
the name of New Mexico. Santa Fe was presently 
built, next to St. Augustine the oldest town in the Uni- 
ted States. Thus we find Spanish rule established in 
the heart of the continent, cotemporaneously with the 
settlement of Virginia under Walter Raleigh. 

The influence of the St. Bartholomew massacre, and 
the cruelties of Spanish rule, are traceable throughout 
12 



138 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

the histories of the earlier colonies. Englishmen dreaded 
those in whose words and treaties, and solemn compacts, 
no reliance could be placed. Protestants, throughout 
the world, learned that safety was coupled with strength. 
This led them to pursue a course for which New Eng- 
landers have been blamed, but to which they were driven 
in order that they might preserve that freedom which 
they sought in the wilderness, and for which they were 
prepared to die. 

These facts furnish us with a key which unlocks the 
mysteries of the subsequent history of Catholics. They 
were afterward desirous of getting a foothold in Mary- 
land. On every side they were surrounded by zealous, 
earnest Protestants. We shall see how they succeeded 
in securing safety for themselves, under the guise of 
freedom for all. We shall notice the character of this 
equality, and shall find that it was narrow in conception, 
selfish in character, and impotent in execution. 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 139 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE OVERTHROW OF THE TEMPORAL POWER 
OF POPERY. 

The triumphs of Xavier in Japan and China — Luther's attack — 
The overthrow of French influence in India — The success of 
Frederic of Prussia — Of De Wolfe on the heights of Quebec — 
Plants the standard of Protestantism in the heart of Europe and 
America. 

The arch of history, which it has been our privilege 
to build, stretches far back to the time when America 
was in dreams and visions disturbing the repose of 
European speculators. Luther was a name unknown to 
history. Loyola's legs were yet unshattered by the 
range of cannon that swept the base of Pampeluna's 
walls, and the eye of the Pope, the Jesuits, had not yet 
followed with their serpent gaze the actions of men, nor 
coiled about them their folds, which cramped, weakened 
and almost destroyed a noble race. India had just 
sprung from the lap of oriental luxury, to resist the 
invaders that sought her wealth and plundered her 
temples. Europe was lying like a mighty giant asleep, 
although sustaining mountains of superstition. Genius, 
spirit, thought, action, were fettered by circumstances 
and chained by delusion. 

The press had just begun to scatter truth among the 
millions, and was fast disentombing the buried memories 
and wisdom of the dark ages. The compass pointed 



140 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

men across the ocean. Genius arose from her iron 
couch — threw off the shackles, and burst into the light 
of a dawning day. The star of freedom began to shed 
its benignant blaze across the path of a sorrowing hu- 
manity, when Luther pulled from the shelf of his 
monkish cell his dust-entombed Bible, and brought 
from the store-house of God's Word things both new and 
old, and spread them before the people. Columbus 
arose from the study of his maps and charts, and pointed 
by the finger of Providence across the seas, began his 
search for the lost Atlantis. 

This arch, taking its support in the discovery of 
America, in its onward course finds a Luther disturbing 
the world by the power of his reasoning and the bold- 
ness of his position. It beholds a Loyola springing to 
the breach, and placing in the hands of the Pope a band 
of men, who were pledged to stay the falling fortunes of 
the See of Borne, and were prepared to encounter any 
difficulty, capable of meeting any exigency and prepared 
for any emergency. The superstition and ignorance of 
the Indies became, in their hands, means of widening 
the area of their empire and of extending the dominions 
of the Pope. Xavier baptized on the Malabar coast, in 
a single month, ten thousand. " A man of higher talent 
than Loyola, a ripe scholar, and of that commanding 
courage which nothing could daunt, there were also in 
him a fervent piety and boundless self-sacrificing benev- 
olence that all the errors of his faith could not obscure." 
In Japan he began and saw in complete and successful 
operation a work that resulted in the conversion of two 
hundred thousand to the Catholic faith. Having seen 
the principles of his religion spreading rapidly in this 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 141 

empire, he longed next to enter China. With the 
assurance that it was at the risk of his life, he bargained 
but to be put on shore on its inhospitable coast. They 
who were to have clone this failed him ; and in sight of 
the empire which he was not allowed to enter, on the 
small rocky island of Soucion, he breathed his last. 
Yet the Jesuits were successful. They penetrated far 
into the interior of that mighty empire, and here, by 
their influence, did much to disturb the foundations of 
its government and create the revolution which is now 
shaking to its very base the crumbling superstructure 
of her institutions. 

Limited at first to sixty members, but soon left with- 
out such restriction, the order increased, in sixty years, 
from ten to ten thousand, and in 1710 the Jesuits num- 
bered about twenty thousand, scattered in their wide- 
spread associations all over the world. These, penetrating 
every clime and becoming conversant with the habits 
and language of almost every race and country, and 
being men of the tinest talents and most finished edu- 
cation, wearing every garb and skilled in every art, 
" formed a body that could out-watch Argus with his 
hundred eyes, and out-work Briareus with his hundred 
hands." It was near this time that Popery reached its 
culminating point. Her forces were all drawn out — 
well-officered battalions were stationed in every clime. 
Her outposts, with their contiguous chain, encircled the 
globe. China in her gloom, Hindostan in her idolatry, 
America with her forests, and Europe with her well- 
filled temples — all were encircled by the influence which 
Roman Catholicism throws around society. Far back of 
this memorable era in history, in one of the obscure 



142 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

streets in Eisenach, a petty town in Germany, stood a 
small boy before a burgher's dwelling, singing a favorite 
air as a recompense for his daily bread. That boy was 
Martin Luther. That Luther contained in his single 
head ideas which were to revolutionize the world. Tetzel 
had been selling indulgences. Luther said to the Pope : 
11 This thing of yours that you call a pardon of sins — it 
is a bit of rag paper with ink. God alone can pardon 
sins. Popeship, spiritual fatherhood of God's church — 
is that a vain semblance of cloth and parchment ? It 
is an awful fact. God's church is not a semblance; 
heaven and hell are not semblances. I stand on this, 
since you drive me to it. Standing on this, I, a poor 
German monk, am stronger than you all. I stand 
solitary, friendless — one man on God's truth; you, 
with your tiaras, triple-hats, with your treasuries and 
armories, thunders spiritual and temporal, stand on 
the devil's lie, and are not so strong !" One of Eng- 
land's best writers has made the remark that " the Diet 
of Worms and Luther's appearance there on the 17th of 
April, 1521, may be considered as the greatest scene in 
modern European history ; the point, indeed, from which 
the whole subsequent civilization takes its rise. After 
multiplied negotiations, disputations, it had come to 
this. The young Charles Fifth, with all the princes of 
Germany, papal nuncios, dignitaries spiritual and tem- 
poral, are assembled there: Luther is to appear and 
answer for himself, whether he will recant or not. The 
world's power and pomp sits there on this hand ; on 
that stands up for God's truth, one man, Hans Luther, 
the poor miner's son. Friends had reminded him of 
Huss, advised him not to go ; he would not be advised. 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 143 

As he wont to the hall on the morrow, the people 
crowded the house-tops, calling out to him, in solemn 
words, not to recant: 'Whosoever denieth me before 
men V they cried to him, as in a kind of solemn petition 
and adjuration. Was it not in reality our petition, too, 
the petition of the whole world, lying in dark bondage 
of soul, paralyzed under a black, spectral nightmare 
and triple-hatted chimera, ^ailing itself Father in God 
and what not ? * Free us, Lutner, it rests with thee ; 
desert us not/ Luther did not desert us. ' Confute 
me/ he said, at the conclusion of his two hours' speech ; 
' confute me by proofs from Scripture, or else by plain, 
just arguments ; I cannot recant otherwise/ How 
could he? ' For it is neither safe nor prudent to do 
aught against conscience. There stand I ; I can do no 
other; God assist me!' It if, as we say, the greatest 
moment in the modern history of men. English Puri- 
tanism, England and its Parliaments, America's vast 
work these two centuries; French Eevolution, Europe 
and its work everywhere at present : the germ of it all 
lay there : had Luther in that moment done other, it 
had been otherwise." 

There is, then, the central hinge of history. Around 
it revolve the most important events of ages. Popery 
was proven to be untrue. The world grew tired of it 
and threw it off. From that platform, upon which the 
heads of Popery and Protestantism sat side by side, 
went forth two mighty armies, whose business it has 
been to fight, and, for all we see, the lines are yet open ; 
the battle is yet undecided in appearance, though we 
shall try and prove that the year 1763 closed a memo- 
rable period in the history of Eomanism, and offers an 



144 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

abutment worthy to support this arch of history, worthy 
to conclude this record of plain, unvarnished facts. 
Less than two and a half centuries have passed since 
Luther struck his first blow for the redemption of his 
race, and, still, when we survey the facts that throng 
the floor of history during this period, we are astonished 
at the triumphs which Truth gained single-handed, over 
Error defended by the cannon and treasure of Christen- 
dom. During this period Jesuit priests had led French 
soldiers to the banks of the Ganges, had given them 
possession of the land. England, a portion of Germany, 
all of Prussia, a few feeble colonies skirting the western 
shore of a wide ocean, were Protestants. The rest of 
the globe was divided between Paganism and Popery. 
It was England and Prussia against the world. It was 
Protestantism battling with Popery for equality — truth 
contending for an usurped throne. 

France had established her empire over thirty mil- 
lions of people in Southern India, while yet England 
had only a few trading agents at Calcutta, Madras and 
Bombay, and these despised and insulted both by French 
and natives. The idea of an Indo-British empire had 
occurred to no human mind. A French army, led by 
the gallant and cunning Duplex, was there, and the 
peninsula of India, containing about one-sixth of the 
human race, seemed about to pass from the dominion 
of the Great Mogul to that of " His Most Christian 
Majesty of France, the eldest son of the Church." The 
throne of Delhi trembled before the tread of the inva- 
der. It was an awful moment in the world's history — 
one which embraced within itself the destinies of 
swarming millions, occupying a territory extending 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 145 

from the peerless bights of Himalaya to Cape Coinorn, 
surpassing in extent the twenty-five American States 
east of the Mississippi, with revenues more ample, and 
subjects more numerous than belonged to any European 
state. India, the goal of the merchant and the con- 
queror for thousands of years, was about to pass from 
the dominion of the Great Mogul into the hands of the 
French, while her Golconda jewels and the gold of Delhi 
was about to be placed by this worthy son at his moth- 
er's feet, to enhance the magnificence and the power of 
the Holy Catholic Church. Tt was a hope whose fitful 
gleam made France and Home exult. It gave the as- 
surance that the one should forever see her power 
exalted above her Saxon rival. For, whatever nation 
controlled the wealth of India ruled the world. Well 
might Kome rejoice in the anticipation of installing her 
priests and saints in every Hindoo temple, of transfer- 
ring the funeral pile from the widow to the heretic, and 
of compelling a hundred millions of people to be bap- 
tized and saved at once. India is the heart and cream 
of Asia, and they who rule in India rule sooner or later 
from Egypt to the Yellow Sea. 

Another has well said: "A hundred years ago, the 
Queen of the Seven Hills was saying in her heart, ; My 
dominion shall encircle the globe. Asia, that world of 
the hoary Past — America, that world of the brilliant 
Future, shall meet at my footstool, Europe, and worship 
me as God. My throne shall overtop the Rocky Moun- 
tains and the Himalaya. The Missouri and Ganges shall 
float my revenues. The waves of every ocean shall 
waft the gold and homage of the gorgeous East and the 
mighty West to thiB Eternal City. Beyond where 
18 



146 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

Alexander trod, beyond where floated Caesar's ensigns 
shall stand the pillars of my dominion — a dominion to 
which all heathen and heretics shall submit or perish 
— a dominion over all the kingdoms of the world, and 
the glory of them.' A hundred years ago Rome might 
think she almost saw her crucifixes erected by the valor 
of loyal Frenchmen upon all the mosques and pagodas 
of Asiatic Infidelity, from Mecca to the Chinese Wall." 
Such was the hope of Rome ; but such a hope was 
never to be realized. Far different was the decree of 
Providence. Although there was peace between the 
English and French crowns, there arose between the 
English and French companies a war most eventful and 
important — a war in which the prize was nothing less 
than the magnificent inheritance of the house of Tamer- 
lane. The French, guided by the commanding genius 
of Dupleix, were everywhere successful. He had gained 
over to his cause, by battle, or stratagem, or intrigue, 
royal lips through which to speak to the millions, who, 
governed nominally by native rulers, and supported by 
native armies under European discipline and command, 
placed in the hands of the French aspirant the scepter 
which called after it the treasure and devotion of the In- 
dian world. At this moment, the valor and genius of 
an obscure English youth suddenly turned the tide of 
fortune. Robert Clive, a young man of but twenty-five 
years of age, was called from the writing-desk, where he 
left the pen to take the sword. His past history had 
been dark and gloomy. Twice, in the hour of his extrem- 
ity and distress, when poor in purse and sick at heart, 
desperation showed itself in his sullen face, and terrible 
resolves. Twice, while in the writer's building, he thinks 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 147 

to end his misery with his life. Ho aims a well-loaded 
pistol at his head — twice it snaps, and lie stops. The 
circumstance affects him as a similar one did Wallcnstein. 
After satisfying himself that the pistol was well loaded, 
he burst forth into an exclamation, that he was reserved 
for something great — and he was. Commissary to the 
troops, he was, for valor and coolness in the hour of dan- 
ger, at Madras, made captain over two hundred English* 
men. " A man," in the language of his commander, 
General Lawrence, "of undaunted resolution, of a cool 
temper, and a presence of mind which never left him in 
the hour of danger, he was eminently fitted to redeem 
the doubtful honor and reputation of English valor. 
His first blow was struck by attacking Afoot, the capital 
of the Carnatic. Thither he led two hundred English, 
and three hundred Sepoys, disciplined after the European 
mode of warfare. The weather was stormy, but Clive 
pushed on, through thunder, lightning and rain, to the 
gates of the city. The garrison, in a panic, evacuated 
the fort, and the English entered it without a blow." 
The troops rallied ; the French sent soldiers. Soon the 
young hero saw T himself surrounded by a formidable 
host. Succor reached him. His courage, coolness, and 
determination, made the faltering brave, and the doubt- 
ing hopeful. During fifty days the siege went on. 
Hunger, and famine stared them in the face. Casualties 
had diminished their English force to one hundred and 
forty men. It has been well said, that " The devotion 
of the little band to its chief, surpassed anything that is 
related of the Tenth Legion of Ca?sar, or of the Old 
Guard of Napoleon. The Sepoys came to Clive, not to 
complain of their scanty fare, but to propose that all the 



148 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

grain should be given to the Europeans, who required 
more nourishment than the natives of Asia. ' The thin 
gruel? they said, ' would suffice for themselves. 9 History 
contains no more touching instance of military fidelity, 
or of the influence of a commanding mind." Dangers 
began to thicken about the besiegers faster than about 
the besieged. Eajah Sohib first tried negotiation, then 
bribes. The one was refused ; the other with scorn 
rejected. Afterward came the vow that, if the proposals 
were rejected, he would instantly storm the fort. The 
answer reminds me of our Harrison, at Fort Meigs, or of 
the brave Taylor at Buena Vista. " My father," said 
Clive, " was a usurer ; my army is a rabble, and you 
would do well to think twice before you send such pol- 
troons into a breach defended by Englishmen." The 
battle began. Clive seemed to be at every point of dan- 
ger — now pointing cannon that swept a raft, now point- 
ing his braves toward the heart of his enemy, and now 
fighting with the stoutest of the foe. The bullets turned 
back the elephants, and made them in their furious 
retreat, do work for Englishmen. The rear ranks of 
the English kept the front ranks constantly supplied 
with loaded muskets, and every shot told on the living 
mass below. The flame of war wildly raged, but victory 
crowned the incredible skill and valor of the youth, and 
enabled him, in 1751 , to strike the death-blow to French 
and papal power in that quarter of the world ; for the 
Indo-European empire which Dupleix had projected for 
papal France, was turned over to her great Protestant 
rival. 

By such bravery Clive won the proud tribute from 
Lord Chatham, of the "heaven-born General." He 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 149 

was the founder of a mighty empire. That empire was 
in danger. Surajah Dowlah, a man weak in intellect, 
of vicious habits and destitute of principle or honor, had 
from childhood hated the English, and, in 1756, was 
raised to the throne. Clive, in the meantime, had gone 
to England, regained his health, spent and given away 
his fortune, and, having been raised to the rank of 
Lieutenant Colonel and the governorship of Fort St. 
David, in 1755 he sailed for India. The affairs of the 
empire -were in a bad condition. I need not relate how 
Surajah Dowlah had conquered the English at Madras — 
rather, how he had frightened them to desertion — how, 
in the mad frenzy of intoxication, he had ordered one 
hundred and forty-six prisoners to be confined in the 
Black Hole, a dungeon which, for want of air and com- 
fort, would not preserve the life of a single man in that 
clime, it being but twenty feet square, and the air- 
holes being small and obstructed — how, in jest and 
sport, a few of the first marched in, supposing it to be a 
joke, as the Nabob had promised them their lives — 
how the remainder were driven in at the point of the 
sword — how the prisoners cried for mercy, strove to 
burst open the door, and then grew mad with despair — 
how Thalwell offered bribes — how they trampled each 
other down, and fought for the places at the doors and 
windows to get breath — how they raved, prayed, blas- 
phemed, and implored the guards to fire among them. 
Of this event, Macaulay says : " Nothing in history or 
fiction can be compared to it — not even the story which 
Ugolino told in the sea of everlasting ice, after he had 
wiped his bloody lips on the scalp of the murderer, 



150 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

approaches the horrors which were recounted by the 
few survivors of that night." 

The maddened host grew still ; the tumult died away 
in low gasps and moanings. The day broke : the Nabob 
had slept off his debauch, and the door was thrown open. 
Twenty-three ghastly figures alone had survived the 
terrors of the night, and staggered, between lines of 
putrid carcasses, out of this charnel-house. This was a 
specimen of Surajah Dowlah, and he was the enemy of 
Clive. Around the one rallied sixty thousand men ; 
by the other stood three thousand. It was a desperate 
game. Gloriously Clive won the stakes. The day 
broke — the day which was to decide the fate of India. 
Once he had yielded to the counsels of fear, and con- 
sented not to fight. An hour passed under the shade 
of trees, in the deep quiet of the night, determined him 
to put everything to the hazard, and made him Robert 
Clive again, the desperate. One hour of battle scattered 
the forces of the Nabob over the plain, never more to 
re-assemble. One hour of battle, and the victory of 
Plassey revealed God's decree, that British dominion in 
India and Asia should endure. " Thus did Jehovah 
smite the scarlet hand stretched out to grasp the Eastern 
Hemisphere, less than a hundred years ago." The 
power of France was broken — the citadel of her strength 
was in the dust. Rome could not burn heretics in 
India, for England held the reins of government, and 
where the tread of the English Lion is felt, there is 
freedom to worship God. Robert Clive, though not 
himself a Christian — though a fierce temper made 
him unable to bear restraint — was made, in 1755, the 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 151 

instrument of opening the East to the messengers of 
truth. 

Turn to the continent of Europe. Come back fifteen 
thousand miles, and enter the Prussian territory. It 
was in the month of August, 1750, that the Seven 
Years' War commenced. The English were fighting 
the French in India, fifteen thousand miles distant, in 
one direction, and the French in America, three thousand, 
in another. The world was like a ship madly tossed 
upon the billows of war. Everywhere its flakes of 
flame lit up with their glare the darkened horizon of 
earth. Society was divided into classes. These were 
opposing legions. Like hostile, deadly armies, they 
fought — steel met steel — hilt touched hilt. Frederic 
of Prussia, ever a friend and an ally of France — a 
man who had governed his own people well — who 
established equal rights in regard to religion and 
schools — who managed and superintended every depart- 
ment of state himself — who held in his own hands all 
the power, and in his head all the wisdom of the state — 
learned, by means of spies, one night, that he was soon 
to be assailed at once by France, Austria, Russia, Saxony, 
Sweden, and the Germanic body — learned, in short, 
that a conspiracy had been formed against him, that 
the house of Brandenburg was to be overthrown, and 
that his dominions were to be portioned out among 
his enemies. He was a man never to be taken off his 
guard. His well-disciplined army was ever ready for 
action. Their reputation for valor ranked first upon 
the continent. One bright spot appeared on the horizon. 
France and England were at war. England's fleet and 
Pitt's wisdom, resources and zeal gave strength to his 



152 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

arm and courage to his heart. He had treasure at his 
command, and he saw gleams of hope shoot athwart his 
sky, when it became certain that genius, judgment, 
resolution and good luck united, might protract the 
struggle during a campaign or two, while to gain even 
a month or two was of importance. Frederic struck the 
first blow. He demanded of the Empress-Queen a dis- 
tinct explanation of her intentions, and plainly told her 
that he should consider a refusal as a declaration of 
war. " I want," said he, " no answer in the style of 
an oracle. ,? He received an answer at once haughty 
and evasive. In an instant the rich electorate of Saxony 
was overflowed by sixty thousand troops. Pirna was 
blockaded, and Dresden was taken. 

No sooner had victory perched on the standard of 
Prussia, than an officer of Frederic entered the royal 
apartments, demanded the Saxon state papers, which 
were known to contain ample proofs of a conspiracy, and 
would, therefore, justify this course. The Queen of Po- 
land, as well acquainted as Frederic with the importance 
of these papers, had packed them in a trunk, and was 
about sending them to Warsaw, when the Prussian officer 
made his appearance. " In the hope that no soldier 
would venture to outrage a lady, a queen, a daughter of 
an emperor, the mother-in-law of a dauphin, she placed 
herself before the trunk, and at length sat down on it." 
The soldiers of Frederic knew how to obey ; but men who, 
from general to footman, eat from pewter plates, and 
were denied silver spoons, were not likely to be scared 
by a woman resolutely taking a seat upon a box. The 
box the soldier took to Frederic, and went back to his 
quarters. Frederic found that the result abundantly 



LN AMERICAN HISTORY. 153 

justified his .suspicions. At the beginning of Novem- 
ber, 1707, the net seemed to have closed completely 
about him. The Russians were in the field spreading 
devastation through his eastern provinces. Silesia was 
overrun by the Austrians, and France attacked his 
dominions from Guelders to Minden. Yet Frederic, by the 
energy of his spirit, the intrepidity of his nature, and 
his indomitable courage, rose superior to his misfortunes. 
On the oth of November he avenged his recent loss with 
the Russians, by the terrible defeat of the Austrians and 
French, at Rosbach, and an equally splendid victory over 
the Austrians at Leuthen. near Breslau, in the following 
month. " That battle," said Napoleon " was a master- 
piece. Of itself it is sufficient to entitle Frederic to a 
place in the first rank among generals. '' On the 5th of 
December, exactly one month after the battle of Rosbach, 
Frederic, with forty thousand men, and Prince Charles, 
at the head of not less than sixty thousand, met at Leu- 
then, hard by Breslau. The King, who was in general 
too much inclined to consider the common soldier as a 
mere machine, resorted, on this day, to means resembling 
those which throned Bonaparte in the hearts of his sol- 
diers, and made the u Vive VHmpercur" sounded by 
the Old Guard, as they spurred their greys to a trot for 
a charge, but a prelude to victory. He called about him 
his principal followers : he spoke to them with great force 
and pathos, and bade them repeat his words to the men. 
A new spirit animated his legions. When pointed 
toward the enemy, they ran to the assault as did the Iron- 
sides of Cromwell, in a state of fierce excitement, tem- 
pered with the coolness of a grave, silent people. The 
Prussian columns advanced to the attack, chanting, to 



154 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

the sound of pipes and drums, the rude hymns of the old 
Saxon Herholds. They never fought so well before, nor 
had the genius of their chief ever been so conspicuous. 
Twenty-seven thousand Austrians were killed, wounded, 
or taken ; fifty stand of colors, a hundred guns, and four 
thousand wagons fell into the hands of the Prussians. 
From that period in history dates the political ascend- 
ancy of the Protestant element. It then became a fixed 
fact, that Popery or Popish powers could not dictate. 
The ark of the national and world-wide covenant was, 
for the first time, entrusted to the hands of unshackled 
freemen. The literature of Germany finds here her 
cradle, poetry her inspiration, genius her model, and 
truth her deliverer. " The fame of Frederic filled all 
the world." The German spirit was roused to action. 
French troops had been beaten by Prussian soldiers, and 
Germany rose to prove herself to France in the study, 
what Prussia had been in the tented field. Protestants 
were permitted to preach, to publish truth with an un- 
muzzled press, and scatter it freely among the masses. 
Year succeeded year. Greater extremities called forth 
greater powers of mind in Frederic, and made still 
greater drains on his revenue and his people. At length 
he conquered, but his kingdom was in ruins. Cities had 
been plundered, sacked, burned. Temples were defiled ; 
palaces were leveled with the ground. Yet Frederic was 
successful, and in 1763 the allied powers formed a treaty 
satisfactory to all. Protestantism had been victorious in 
India and in Europe. The disciple of Jesus was permit- 
ted to sing his favorite air on the waters of the Mediter- 
ranean, on the Khine, and on the Ganges. From the 
Alps to the Himalayas — from shore to shore — from 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 155 

ocean to ocean — Popery had felt the power of truth, 
when preached by a line of cannon encircling half the 
globe. 

But there was another hemisphere beyond the Atlan- 
tic, and there the purple-clad lady of the Tiber dreamed 
that she should have an empire wider than all the 
world that Caesar knew — greater than the Indies — and, 
judging from the wealth and treasure of Mexico and 
Peru, quite as full of the yellow dust. Here was 
henceforth to be her El Dorado. It was hers by right 
Divine; for she had found it; her sons had mapped it 
out ; her disciples had threaded the forests from Mon- 
treal to St. Anthony, and theme to the great Gulf; 
they had scaled the mountains, and laved their feet on 
the distant shore of that sea, whose waters on its farther 
border sung the requiem to some of her dearest hopes. 
In their pathway names canonical were scattered, as 
eternal monuments of their right to possess the land. 
French soldiers commanded the empire — the St. Law- 
rence, the Lakes, and the Mississippi. Jesuits had 
overrun the forests, and sworn the sons of the wild-wood 
to furnish food and men to France, as a recompense for 
a clear pass-ticket from hell to heaven, given to their 
dead and living friends. Soldiers, who invoked the 
Virgin and adored the wafer, gave battle to the power 
of Britain on the waters of Champlain, and far away on 
the banks of the Ohio. French outposts belted the 
homes of Englishmen, while they extended along the 
table-lands of Mexico, overlooked the mines of Peru, 
reached the broad plains of the Amazon and La Plata 
— northward, southward, from pole to pole, from ocean 
to ocean — these missionaries extended the dominion of 



156 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

the Pope, until in the New World none disowned his 
scepter, save a few red brethren in the woods, and a 
few white heretics along the shore. And thus she built 
the citadel of her hope, that when, in coming ages, the 
New World should stand in fearless majesty above the 
Old, her ensigns should wave in glory along the West- 
ern sky. 

The language of the prophet seems peculiarly appli- 
cable in indicating the future of that power on whose 
dominions, at this time, the sun never went down in 
night : " Behold, I have made thee small among the 
heathen ; thou art greatly despised. The pride of thine 
heart hath deceived thee, thou that dwellest in the clefts 
of the rock, whose habitation is high; that saith in his 
heart, who shall bring me down to the ground ? Though 
thou exalt thyself as the eagle, and though thou set 
thy nest among the stars, thence will I bring thee 
down, saith the Lord." The forces of Eome had been 
beaten in India and on the continent. Her pride had 
been humbled. The wave of war, that began in distant 
India, swelling as it journeyed westward — gathering as 
it did within itself the animosities and deep-rooted 
prejudices of ages — attained a fearful magnitude in 
Europe. Its proud crest, that had threatened the 
institutions, the altars, the religion of our fathers, was 
raised on high. It seemed about to crush all, and bury 
all. The retirement of Pitt threatened utter ruin to 
the house of Brandenburg. His will had been Eng- 
land's will — his pledge England's pledge ; and when he 
wished a subsidy to aid the struggling Frederic in the 
desperate contest against overwhelming odds, that wish 
became a law. Treasure, armies and fleets went 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 157 

wherever he pointed his finger, or turned his eye. He 
was the strong pillar of the house and hope of Bran- 
denburg*. He had fallen, and the power that he had 
exercised passed into hostile hands. To make peace 
with France — to shake oft', with all, or more than all, 
the speed compatible with decency, every continental 
connection — these were among the chief objects of the 
new minister. This policy alienated the friendship of 
Frederic, and inspired him with a deep and bitter hatred 
to the English name, and produced effects which are 
still felt throughout the civilized world. A darker 
hour never shrouded in her natal gloom the hopes of a 
man, than that which threw about Frederic the folds of 
blackness. His sky was tempest-driven. Yells of vic- 
tory resounded in every quarter of the globe, and ran 
along the contending lines. The wave of war mounted 
still higher, as if to engulf in a common ruin the 
wisdom of centuries, the toil of a life-time, and the 
genius of an age. But, as the fisherman's bark, freight- 
ed with the hopes of all time and eternity, tempest- 
tossed on the billowy main of Galilee, was preserved 
from a watery grave by the interposition of the Ruler 
of the waters and their powers, so was the cause of 
Protestantism saved from utter wreck by a help as 
unforeseen, yet as providential and mighty, as that 
which made the winds cease, and the waters sleep in 
quiet. Elizabeth of Russia died. The Grand Duke 
Peter, her nephew, that ascended her throne, was not 
only the admirer, but the bosom friend of Frederic. 
" The days of the new Czar's government were few and 
evil, but sufficient to produce a change in the whole 
state of Christendom. He set the Prussian prisoners 



158 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

free, fitted them out decently, and sent them back to 
their master ; he withdrew his troops from the provinces 
which Elizabeth had decided on incorporating with her 
dominions, and absolved all those Prussian subjects who 
had been compelled to swear fealty to Russia, from their 
engagements." This event gave a death-blow to the 
cause of the allied powers. It was the withering of 
the loins, as by the touch of an angel. Thenceforth it 
was a limping war they waged with Frederic. The 
black eagle of Prussia was everywhere victorious. 
England and France paired off together at this time. 
They concluded a treaty, by which they bound them- 
selves to observe neutrality with respect to the German 
war. Thus, the coalitions on both sides were dissolved. 
Austria, single-handed, faced Prussia on the field, and 
Austria fell. In 1763, the proud and revengeful spirit 
of the Empress-Queen gave way. The peace of Her- 
bertsburg put an end to the conflict, which had, during 
seven years, devastated Germany. The King ceded 
nothing. The whole continent in arms had proved 
unable to tear Silesia from that iron grasp. The war 
was over. Frederic was safe. His glory was beyond 
the reach of envy. He had given an example, unpar- 
alleled in history, of what capacity and resolution can 
effect against the greatest superiority of power — the 
utmost spite of fortune. 

Every voice has its echo, every sea its shore, and 
every war its rise, its progress, its decay, its close. 
" The successes of the Seven Years' War," says Ban- 
croft, " were the triumphs of Protestantism." The 
Catholic powers, attracted by a secret consciousness of 
the decay of old institutions, banded themselves together 



IN AMKfiHUH HISTORY. 159 

to arrest the progress of change. " In vain did the 
descendants of the feudal aristocracies lead to the field 
superior numbers; in vain did the Pope bless tln-ir 
banners, as though uplifted against unbelievers; no 
God of battles breathed life into their hosts, and the 
resistless heroism of the earlier chivalry was no more." 
When the Pope blessed a sword, and sent it, together 
with the other trappings of war, as a confident harbin- 
ger of victory, Frederic and Europe laughed. The 
King wrote verses ; Voltaire smiled. The priests were 
believed to be insincere. The people had lost confi- 
dence in the ability and word of the Pope. u In the 
long, tumultuous strife, Protestantism had fulfilled its 
political ends, and was never again to convulse the 
world." The Catholic monarchies, in their struggle 
against innovations, had encountered overwhelming 
defeat, and the cultivated portion of humanity stood 
ready to welcome a new era. Man stood out an indi- 
vidual. For himself he thought, believed, and acted. 
Philosophers caught the life-giving principle of this 
personal liberty, and wide spread it over the land. 
" Individuality was the ground-work of new theories in 
politics, ethics, and industry." All freedom of mind in 
Germany hailed the peace of Hubertsburg as its own 
victory. Frederic challenged justice, under the law, 
for the humblest against the highest. " He, among 
Protestants, set the bright pattern of the equality of 
Catholics in worship and in civil condition." 

Philosophy, encouraged by brighter auspices, en- 
wreathed Europe with her smile. Literature, enjoying 
a wider freedom, took the friendless poor and thought- 
ful bj the hand, and raised them from obscurity to rank. 



160 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

Above thrones, religion, Christianity, the heaven-born 
liberty of being came forth with its all-pervading ener- 
gy, as the common possession of civilized man — the 
harbinger of new changes, the help-meet of all. 

Thus, by a strange coincidence, the year 1763 was 
distinguished for its knell of death, which rang out in 
distant India, and on the continent in Prussia, as a 
requiem hymned over the grave of feudalism, proscrip- 
tion and despotism. It, too, was equally distinguished 
in America, as being the era of the birth of principles 
— the starting point in civilization — the terminus of a 
protracted struggle* For years before even Clive struck 
a blow in India, or Frederic disturbed the ancient dy- 
nasties of Europe, a war had been waging in the forests 
of the New World. Truth, freedom and equality, in 
their struggle for supremacy j found champions in the 
sons of New England, in the breast and arm of a 
Washington, and in the wise head and bold pen of a 
Franklin. This contest was not the ripple of a mo- 
ment, that breaks upon the shore and is lost forever, 
but the long swell of the Atlantic, wafted from distant 
realms, and heaved on the bosom of a remote antiquity. 
The passions that had been called into being in this 
new theater of a world's checkered history, were not 
the momentary excitations of national rivalry, or family 
prejudices, or the casual burst of hostile feeling, but 
the mutual deep-rooted hatred which had been gather- 
ing strength for eighteen hundred years. The question 
to be decided first, was — Shall North America be Pro- 
testant or Catholic ? All knew that freedom found a 
hope in Protestantism — a grave wherever Catholicism 
ruled supreme. France declared America should be 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 161 

Catholic. So said the Pope ; thus spoke Montcalm ; for 
this the Jesuits labored everywhere, in the thronged 
city, and in the solitudes of forests; amid the haunts 
of civilization, and by the cabin and tent-fires of the 
red man. For this strove all Canada, until she eat up 
her heart and died for want of food. Her fields, yellow 
with the golden grain, were unharvested, only as women 
bared their arms to toil; for the husbandmen were far 
away, fighting for their faith. Year after year they 
fought. The genius, the bravery and wisdom of Mont- 
calm everywhere crowned their efforts with success. 
Their treasury was empty ; so were their granaries ; 
and Montcalm declared, that though he had been every- 
where successful in arms, yet destiny fought against for- 
tune ; famine was more to be dreaded than Englishmen, 
and the cries of a starving populace paralyzed his arm, 
and weakened his faith. The armies of New England 
were well trained, but they knew not the tactics of the 
woods ; besides, the heroes of memorable battles in 
Europe despised the wisdom and intuition of a Wash- 
ington, and the common sense of the undisciplined but 
brave backwoodsmen. Their marches were slow, cum- 
bersome and faulty. They built roads while the enemy 
were in ambush ; they slept while they should have 
marched, and worked at a bridge while the enemy were 
exposed. All this was the schooling, which, in after 
times, produced tremendous results. It was the educa- 
tion the people needed. Montcalm, now lying in am- 
bush, belted by ten thousand naked warriors, and anon 
plunging on through brake and briar, wood and river, 
to perform some daring feat, and carry forward an 
enterprise considered by all as bold and hazardous, was 
14 



162 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

the illustrious pioneer in the world's disenthrallment. 
" The Puritans of New England changed their hemi- 
sphere to escape from bishops, and hated prelacy with 
the rancor of faction." 

Voltaire waged the same warfare with widely different 
weapons, and, writing history as a partisan, made the 
annals of his race a continuous sarcasm against the 
hierarchy of the Soman Catholic church. It gives us 
confidence in humanity's progress, in the wisdom and 
almightiness of Providence, when we see all, both friend 
and foe, brought into a common field, and made, by an 
unseen Hand, laborers and co-laborers together for a 
common object. What Voltaire was in the domain of 
literature and with the pen, Montcalm was with the 
sword. His example made itself felt over a continent. 
It went beyond the ocean, and threw its charm over Pitt. 
A spark, knocked from the shield of his tactics, fell upon 
the path of a young hero in England, and lit up his 
future. It parted the clouds that hung over Protest- 
antism in America, and stimulated every breast with 
the electric magic of hope. Thus were men being 
schooled in America, who were soon to be placed on the 
summit of the promontory of progress, who were to 
welcome everything calculated to soften barbarism, 
refine society, and stay the cruelties of superstition. 
They saw in the future the hopeful coming of popular 
power, and heard the footsteps of Providence along the 
line of centuries, journeying to a world-wide emancipa- 
tion of thought and limb. 

James Wolfe, born in 1726, the son of a hero, was 
made by Providence to perform an illustrious part in 
the early history of America. A man possessed of a 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 163 

splendid genius, a generous heart, and great couragv — 
distinguished alike by his virtues and his valor, as by 
his coolness and judgment — he was eminently fitted to 
attract the attention and secure the confidence of Pitt, 
who called forth his genius in the execution of his 
gigantic plans. Wolfe had rendered himself conspicuous, 
when a boy, at the battle of Le Teldt, and ever after 
during the war, in every battle, gathered fresh laurels 
by his chivalrous deeds. The order and discipline of 
his corps at Minden, and the gallant conduct of his 
soldiers, is to this day proverbial. The fall of Louis- 
burgh displayed to the admiration of the nation the 
abilities of their favorite general, who was immediately 
after selected, in 1759, for the command of the expedi- 
tion against Quebec. The story of their ascent up 
precipitous cliffs, by means of hanging boughs and 
projecting crags, until they stood upon the bights of 
Abraham, upon the very summit of the supposed im- 
pregnable fortress of Quebec, is familiar to all. How 
he led on his troops — how, by perseverance and military 
stratagem, he overcame the difficulties of the enterprise 
— how he disregarded the wound in his wrist, and still, 
sword in hand, led on his troops against overwhelming 
odds, from victory to victory — how, pierced by a second 
ball, he fell into the arms of an officer and said : " Don't 
let my brave companions see me fall:" — all this has 
been committed to immortal record. " Night, silence, 
the rushing tide, veteran discipline, the sure inspiration 
of genius, had been his allies ; his battle-field, high 
over the ocean river, was the grandest theater on earth 
for illustrious deeds ; his victory, one of the most 
momentous in the history of mankind, gave to the 



164 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

English tongue and the institutions of the Germanic 
race, the unexplored and seemingly infinite West and 
North. He crowded into a few hours, actions that would 
have given luster to length of life ; and filling his day 
with greatness, completed it before his noon." Amid 
the gathering gloom and incoming night of the tomb — 
amid the roar of cannon, the clash of arms, and the 
moans of the dying — a shout, borne on every breeze, 
reaches his ear. Louder and still louder grows the 
swell, as it runs along the victorious lines. " They fly ! 
they fly !" sounds clear above the roar and din of battle 
on the hights of Abraham. The expiring Wolfe starts 
from the repose of death's stupor to ask, " Who flies ?" 
" The French fly." " Then I die contented," says the 
soldier, and expires. 

Little did the dying hero understand the significance 
of that shout. It meant that Canada had passed from 
French rule forever — that the chain stretched from the 
Lakes to the Gulf, to bind the great valley to Eome, 
was broken. It meant that North America was lost 
forever to the Pope ; it meant that the scarlet rider of 
the ten-horned beast should never control the destiny 
of the Western Hemisphere ; it meant that Eoman 
domination on earth was sinking to rise no more. Thus 
did Eome project, a hundred years ago, and thus, by 
the sword of the Saxon, did her projects perish in the 
farthest East, on the European Continent, and in the 
wilderness of the West. 

Surely, how true it is that all history displays the 
glorious Providence of God ! " How sublime and bene- 
ficent is the grand drift of human affairs, as controlled 
by that Providence ! How dark and deplorable is the 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 165 

world's history, as the designs and characters of men 
are displayed ! how bright and blessed, as the plans and 
agency of God are concerned ! How adorable the wisdom 
that uses wicked or ambitious men, like Clive, or Fred- 
eric, or Wolfe, unconsciously, or against their will, to 
subserve the kingdom of Christ ! How surely will the 
roll of ages crush Anti-Christ, and every anti-Christ ! 
How delightful, that God's decrees will be fulfilled ! 
how sublime Jehovah's march along the ages ! How do 
the grandest schemes, the profoundest policy, the most 
potent combinations that are anti-Christian, perish 
before Him ! Courage, then, ye friends of God and 
friends of man. The Lord reigneth, and let the earth 
rejoice in the foreordained decree that the splendors of 
His power, wisdom and love shall be displayed by means 
of whatsoever comes to pass." 



166 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 



CHAPTER VII. 

HISTORY OP RELIGIOUS FREEDOM IN THE 
UNITED STATES. 

The lecture of Archbishop Hughes on " The Catholic Chapter in the 
History of the United States," noticed — A comparison of the Uni- 
ted States and South America — Religious Freedom — Its establish- 
ment claimed for the Catholics of Maryland — That claim dis- 
proved — Roger Williams, of Rhode Island, the standard-bearer of 
Soul-Liberty — James II — His character — Roger Williams and 
Lord Calvert in contrast. 

The object of the lecture delivered by John Hughes, 
Archbishop of New York, in the Metropolitan Hall, on 
the evening of March 8th, 1853, was to show that 
" Catholics are by no means strangers and foreigners in 
this land ; that there was no civil or religious immunity 
won by the success of the revolution, in which Catholics 
were not morally and politically entitled, in their own 
right, to share equally with their Protestant fellow- 
citizens." 

It were not difficult to show that the lecturer, by his 
own words, had established the fact, that Catholics were 
permitted to live here by the gratuity of Protestant tole- 
ration. For, though the design of the lecture was to 
prove that Catholics were here from right, dejure, and 
not from toleration, still the fact, that each of the origi- 
nal thirteen States, with the exception of Delaware and 
Pennsylvania, were " compelled to improve their legisla- 
tive records, by removing that clause disabling Catholics 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 167 

from holding office," evidences, very clearly, that these 
States conferred upon Catholics privileges which they did 
not enjoy before, whether it is " received as a gratuity of 
Protestant toleration," or not. 

He assumes another position which deserves attention. 
He denies the right to call this a Protestant country, and 
claims that by right of discovery it belongs to the church. 
He says, " Canada was ceded by the treaty of Paris, in 
1763, to England, including all the dependencies of 
Canada, or New France, in North America. In all these 
Territories and States, the rights of property and reli- 
gion have been guaranteed to the inhabitants ; and now, 
at this late day, are the ancient, or even the new Catho- 
lic inhabitants, in despite of treaties (and the befit treaty 
of all, the American Constitution), to be told that this is 
a Protestant country ? " 

We reply — England was a Protestant country at the 
time of the conquest. She has been so ever since. 
England conquered France, and whatever privileges 
were granted to Catholics in Canada, they were a u gra- 
tuity " from a Protestant power ; and the Catholics of 
that province, beggared by a long and continued strife, 
received them as such. But the conquest of Canada has 
nothing to do, in any way, with making this a Protest- 
ant country. 

Our revolution began with a protest. The principles 
upon which the superstructure of her institutions rest, 
grew out of the doctrines cherished and defended by 
Protestants, both in the Old and Xew World. The ma- 
jority of her people are Protestant ; her laws, govern- 
ment, and the free spirit that pervades every part of her 
system, are eminently Protestant. Everything connected 



168 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

with our history — the self-reliance of our people ; their 
refusal of all dictation ; the republican form of elections ; 
the democratic tendency to popularize every question ; 
the withdrawal of power from the hands of the few, and 
placing it in the hands of the many ; the fact that church 
and state are forever separated — all go to evidence the 
difference existing between this form of government and 
those of the Catholic powers of Europe. The difference 
can be better seen by contrasting the essentially Protest- 
ant United States with Canada, Mexico and the repub- 
lics of South America. 

In this immense arena the lists are opened between 
two religions ; the Catholicism of the Council of Trent 
has received for the display of her strength South Amer- 
ica. There the founders are not isolated individuals ; 
on the contrary, according to Catholic principles, an asso- 
ciation already formed, a powerful empire, with all its 
resources, comes to take possession of the soil. Spain 
established herself in America with her church, her 
authority, and her armies ; and enhancing the value of 
her portion, on one side, the nation that takes its place 
on this scene is the right arm of Catholicism, and on the 
other the country that is assigned to it is the most visibly 
favored by the Creator. Eich valleys, and fertile plains 
seem to demand the living energy which would give 
birth to new empires. In order that the trial may be 
more decisive, Catholicism alone is allowed to approach 
those shores. The civilization of the natives, which 
might have embarrassed her actions, disappears. Noth- 
ing remains but mighty nature, who in her solitude 
invites man to crown her with vast ideas, projects, inno- 
vations, societies, kingdoms, gigantic as herself. But 



M AMERICAN HISTORY. 169 

man remains motionless, bound by invisible chains. 
" His mind neither rises nor expands, in this world 
newly opened to receive it. Three ages pass away ; all 
wither around him in the midst of primeval forests ; not 
one new thought buds out in the form of an institution, 
an enterprise, or even a book. The morning breeze of 
the Universe fans the brow, but can not give new life to 
decrepitude. What are these infant empires — Mexico, 
Brazil, Buenos Ayres, Chili, that have in these first days 
of their existence, the wrinkles of Byzantium ? Chili 
alone seems yet to preserve the spirit of the ancient 
Araccanians in the poem of Ereilla." 

Let these nations of the South do what they will, they 
end inevitably by realizing in their government the ideal 
which they have inscribed in their State religion — that 
is, absolute power. All they can do is, to change dicta- 
tors ! and thus we see republics succeed in nothing but 
in tightening the bonds of their thraldom. M Progressive 
punishment ! South America lies, as it were, at the foot 
of a vast upas tree, ever distilling its torpor, while its 
trunk, rooted in another element, remains invisible." 

Mexico, again, is the theater of revolution. Riot and 
bloodshed is the order of the day. No one can compare 
Texas, as it once was, while under the Mexican yoke, with 
Texas now ; nor California when the hacienda stood where 
San Francisco contests with the East the palm of com- 
merce, without feeling that much more might be written 
in contrasting the two nations, as it respects their civil, 
commercial, and moral conditions. 

The United States, in their respect for the Bible, for 
opinion, and religions, are essentially Protestant. In 
South America, the opposite result proceeds from as 
15 



170 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

opposite a course. Eeligion, with the inhabitants of 
Catholic countries, is a matter of habit more than a con- 
viction. Their religion exerts no restraining influence 
upon them. Those confined in our city jails are said 
never to eat meat on Fridays, while they are guilty of 
every form of excess. Indeed, the history of Catholic 
countries shows, that rigid austerity in penance, and 
what not, always results in laxity of morals. 

We can not continue this subject further. Two other 
claims put forth in the lecture now under consideration 
deserve notice. He asserts that the palm of having 
been the first to preach and practice civil and especially 
religious liberty to the American people is due, beyond 
controversy, to the Catholic colony of Maryland. Pro- 
fessor Schaff, in his late work, entitled " America — 
Political, Social and Religious," on page 223, says : 

"It is certainly a very remarkable fact, that this 
Roman Catholic colony, one hundred and forty years 
before the war of Independence, about contemporaneously 
with the persecuted Roger Williams, but more fully 
than he, and nearly fifty years before the settlement of 
Pennsylvania, through the equally tolerant Quaker, 
William Penn, proclaimed the principle of the fullest 
religious liberty, and acted upon it, until the Protest- 
ants temporarily overthrew it." 

It is almost impossible to form an apology for so 
gross a blunder as the one made by the distinguished 
author. We shall not only disprove the position assumed, 
but shall show that the liberty of which the author 
boasts, was unworthy of the name. 

Freedom to worship God is inscribed upon the naked 
granite of Plymouth. It stands out in bold relief upon 






IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 171 

the frontlet of the Constitution, which, like a mighty 
arch, spans this confederacy of States. It is seen in 
the stars and stripes that form our national banner, 
which floats so proudly over twenty-five millions of 
freemen ; it is whispered by every breeze that propels 
our navies: and the eagle, in the wild, free note she 
sings when high in air, or resting on mountain crag, 
heralds, it to mankind. But never did this principle 
find a mother in the church of Rome, or a cradle in the 
colony of Maryland. It was proclaimed by the Son of 
God, when he declared that truth shall make men free. 
It was repeated by those martyrs of truth who shed 
their blood in its defense in Home, in England, and in 
America. Broadly as this banyan tree of soul-liberty 
has now expanded its branches and fixed its roota over 
our fair and goodly land, the first seed was planted 
when the hunted exile, Roger Williams, stepped from 
his canoe on the soil of Rhode Island, the soil henceforth 
to be consecrated to liberty ; and, as he says, " in grate- 
ful remembrance of God's merciful providence to him 
in his distress," called it Providence. Such was the 
birth-place and cradle of religious freedom, but never 
in Catholic Maryland, as we shall show. The history 
of this principle has survived the wreck of empires and 
the overthrow of dynasties. It has found a niche in the 
temple of fame ; its voice is heard sounding along the 
past ; its home is found in the hearts of millions of 
every age and clime ; its monuments are thickly standing 
along the paths our fathers trod, and its words of warn- 
ing are sounding in the ears of all who will turn the eye 
toward the dark back-ground of a bloody, gloomy past. 
We shall notice those arguments by which Dr. Hughes 



172 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

claims for Catholics the honor of establishing, without 
precedent or example, religious freedom upon this con- 
tinent. He says: "Far be it from me to diminish, by 
one iota, the merit that is claimed for Rhode Island, 
Pennsylvania, and perhaps other States, on the score of 
having proclaimed religious freedom ; but the Catholics 
of Maryland, by priority of time, had borne away the 
prize. The history of the whole human race had fur- 
nished them with no previous example from which they 
could copy, although Catholic Poland had extended a 
measure of toleration to certain Protestants of Germany, 
which had been denied them by their own brethren in 
their own country." 

Before we glance at the history of the Catholic colony 
of Maryland, which sailed up the Potomac early in 1634, 
let us see if this claim can be made out. Was religious 
liberty first preached and practiced in the Cathode colony 
of Maryland? In arguing this question, it is not 
necessary to awaken the recollection of those facts 
which, thronging the past history of this church, prove 
that whatever might have been her course just at this 
time, and under these peculiar circumstances, Popery 
has been marked, in every age of its existence, by 
intolerance and persecution. The decrees of councils, 
the invectives of Popes, and the solemn oaths of pre- 
lates, no less than the dungeon of the inquisition, the 
fires of the auto-da-fe, or the recent cruel banishment 
of the exiles of Zellerthal or Madeira — all proclaim that 
persecution is an essential element of the system, and 
liberty of conscience, in their view, a detestable heresy. 
If Lord Calvert possessed the noble characteristics 
claimed for him by all — if he were a lover of religious 






IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 173 

freedom, and desired to plant here upon this continent 
the tree of liberty — then was he an exception to a general 
rule, and his education must have differed materially from 
that obtained in the school in which true and zealous 
churchmen are reared. But let us settle the question 
as to the priority of time. In Maryland, the boasted 
law was passed in 1649. Bancroft, in speaking of it, 
says: " The controversy between the king and the 
parliament advanced ; the overthrow of the monarchy 
seemed about to confer unlimited power, in England, 
upon the embittered enemies of the Romish church ; 
and, as if with a foresight of impending danger and an 
earnest desire to stay its approach, the ltoman Catholics 
of Maryland, with the earnest concurrence of their gov- 
ernor and of the proprietary, determined to place upon 
their statute book an act for the guaranty of religious 
freedom, which had ever been sacred upon their soil : 

"•And whereas, the enforcing of the conscience in 
matters of religion hath frequently fallen out to be of 
dangerous consequence in those commonwealths where 
it has been practiced, and for the more quiet and peace- 
able government of this province, and the better to 
preserve mutual love and amity among the inhabitants, 
no person within this province, professing to believe in 
Jesus Christ, shall be any ways troubled, molested, or 
discountenanced for his or her religion, or in the free 
exercise thereof.' " 

This, then, is the law for the passage of which Dr. 
Hughes would give to Catholics the praise of furnish- 
ing for the framers of the Constitution a copy from 
which they borrowed that provision of the Federal Con- 
stitution securing universal freedom of religion. This 



174 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

law, we have seen, was passed in 1649. Go over to 
Ehode Island. There, too, is a hardy company, driven 
by persecution to seek a new asylum, where religious 
belief can be tolerated. They find it by the open sea, 
in the deep and unbroken solitudes of the forests. 
Two years have passed since their code of laws was 
adopted, viz: in 1647 — closing with the following noble 
avowal of entire religious liberty to all : 

" Otherwise than this, what is herein forbidden, all 
men may walk as their consciences persuade them, every 
one in the name of his God. And let the lambs of the 
Most High walk in this colony without molestation, in 
the name of Jehovah their God forever and ever." 

And this glorious declaration of soul-liberty in Bap- 
tist Ehode Island, be it remembered, was enacted two 
years before the first law on the subject in Catholic 
Maryland. 

As I have now shown that Khode Island, instead of 
Maryland, by priority of time, has borne away the 
prize, and as it is but just to say — (See Bancroft, vol. 
n., p. 66, for another reference)— ferat qui meruit palmam, 
let us now glance at the remarks of Bancroft, and con- 
trast those made in reference to Eoger Williams and 
his law in Ehode Island with those made in relation to 
the law of 1649 in Maryland. He says: 

11 At a time when Germany was the battle-field for 
all Europe in the implacable wars of religion ; when 
even Holland was bleeding with the anger of vengeful 
factions ; when France was still to go through the 
fearful struggle with bigotry ; when England was 
gasping under the despotism of intolerance ; almost 
half a century before William Penn became an American 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 175 

proprietary, and two years before Descartes founded 
modern philosophy on the method of free reflection — 
Roger Williams asserted the great doctrine of intellect- 
ual liberty. It became his glory to found a state upon 
that principle, and to stamp himself upon its rising 
institutions in characters so deep that the impress has 
remained to the present day, and can never be erased 
without the total destruction of the work. The princi- 
ples which he first sustained amid the bickerings of a 
colonial parish, next asserted in the general court of 
Massachusetts, and then introduced into the wilds on 
Narragansett Bay, he soon found occasion to publish to 
the world, and to defend as the basis of the religious 
freedom of mankind ; so that, borrowing the rhetoric 
employed by his antagonist in derision, we may com- 
pare him to the lark, the pleasant bird of the peaceful 
summer, that, ' affecting to soar aloft, springs upward 
from the ground, takes his rise from pole to tree,' and 
at last, surmounting the highest hills, utters his clear 
chorals through the skies of morning. He was the first 
person in modern Christendom to assert in its plenitude 
the doctrine of the liberty of conscience, the equality 
of opinions before the law ; and in its defense he was 
the harbinger of Milton, the precursor and the supe- 
rior of Jeremy Taylor. For Taylor limited his tolera- 
tion to a few Christian sects ; the philanthropy of 
Williams compassed the earth ; Taylor favored partial 
reform, commended lenity, argued for forbearance, and 
entered a special plea in behalf of each tolerable sect ; 
Williams would permit persecution of no opinion, of no 
religion — leaving heresy unharmed by law, and ortho- 
doxy unprotected by the terrors of penal statutes." 



176 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

Without comments, let us immediately pass to the 
notice which Mr. Bancroft takes of the Maryland 
statutes : " The clause for liberty in Maryland/' he 
says, (page 256, vol. 1,) " extended only to Chris- 
tians, and was introduced by the proviso, that ' whatso- 
ever person shall blaspheme God, or shall deny or 
reproach the Holy Trinity, or any of the three persons 
thereof, shall be punished with death.' Nowhere in 
the United States is religious opinion now deemed a 
proper subject for penal enactments. The only fit 
punishment for error is refutation. The best medicine 
for intemperate grief is compassion ; the keenest rebuke 
for ribaldry, contempt. " 

°A distinguished writer, in speaking of this law 
establishing religious freedom in Maryland, says : 
" Probably some exceedingly charitable Protestants, 
who, from having heard this tale of Maryland Catholic 
liberty so oft reiterated, have taken for granted that a 
story so often repeated must be true, will be surprised 
when they learn from the above that, under the pro- 
visions of this law, such ornaments of America as the 
eloquent and pure-minded Wm. Channing, the accom- 
plished statesman and scholar, Edward Everett, or the 
erudite historians, Jared Sparks or George Bancroft 
himself, might be hanged on a gibbet, or burned at a 
stake, for exercising their inalienable civil right of 
private judgment in matters of religion.'' 

By this law " persons using any reproachful word or 
speeches concerning the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of 
our Saviour, or the holy apostles or evangelists, or any 

°See Christian Review, p. 33, Jan., 1853 — Soul-Liberty, by Dr. 
Dowling. 



IN AMERICAN HISTOKY. 177 

of them, for the first offense were to forfeit five pounds 
sterling to the lord proprietary, or, in default of payment, 
to be publicly whipped and imprisoned, at the pleasure 
of his lordship, or his lieutenant-general; for the second 
offense, to forfeit ten pounds sterling, or, in default of 
payment, to be publicly and severely whipped and im- 
prisoned, as before directed ; and for the third offense, to 
forfeit lands and goods, and be forever banished out of 
the province." Such are two of the articles in this fam- 
ous Catholic law in favor of religious liberty : the only 
redeeming feature of which is, that a subsequent section 
declares, that "any person presuming, contrary to this 
act, wilfully to disturb, wrong, trouble, or molest, any 
person whatsoever, within this province, professing to 
believe in Jesus Christ, for, or in respect of his or her 
religion, or the free exercise thereof, otherwise than is 
provided for in this act, shall pay treble dam the 

party so wronged and molested, and also forfeit twenty 
shillings sterling for every such offense — one-half to his 
lordship, the other half to the party molested : and in 
default of paying the damage or fine, be punished by 
public whipping and imprisonment, at the pleasure of 
the lord proprietary/' The meaning of all which is, that 
Roman Catholics, and all other professed Trinitarian sects 
might enjoy their opinions without molestation — a step 
in advance, it is admitted, of Romanists everywhere else ; 
but that every Infidel, every Deist, every Unitarian, 
should be punished, himself with death, and his family 
with starvation, by the confiscation of goods to the lord 
proprietary ! And this is the beau ideal of religious 
liberty, for which the orator of the '• Catholic Chapter" 
calls upon us to take the crown from the head of Roger 



178 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

Williams, or of William Penn, and place it upon the brow 
of the Catholic founder of Maryland. See vol. ii., page 
239, for another reference. 

It has now been shown, not only that the Catholic 
colony of Maryland was not the first to proclaim religious 
freedom, but that she did not proclaim entire religious 
freedom at any time. It should be remembered, that at 
the time when Lord Baltimore sought this charter from 
the hands of a Protestant king, it would have been 
impossible to have obtained one that would have deprived 
the Protestants in America of those liberties for which 
they were and had been struggling in England. Lord 
Baltimore knew full well, that he could not procure a 
charter, granting him the right to persecute the reformed 
faith. The history of the world, for the last ten centu- 
ries, is made up of wars and persecutions of the Catholic 
church, carried on for the purpose of extirpating those 
of a different belief. The world had been awakened. A 
tempest of strife was tossing the sea of humanity. Moun- 
tains of wrath, black with storm-clouds, and redolent with 
the lurid glare of hate, hung over them, and at this 
time — viz : when Lord Baltimore asked for his charter — 
they were glad to obtain a charter for freedom, couched 
in any terms, and granting any conditions of rest and 
quiet. What else, beside persecution, could they expect, 
if they went to America without protection of some kind ? 
The plains of the South were yet red with the blood of 
slaughtered Protestants ; Canada was walled against 
freedom of every kind, save to Catholics ; Jesuit priests 
were constantly stirring up wars among the natives ; war, 
bloodshed, and strife, characterized them ; at home they 
were hated, abroad they were shunned ; and for this reason 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 



179 



they early sought a refuge from persecution — a shel- 
ter from the gathering storm — a protection against the 
punishment which Catholic acts of violence were provok- 
ing throughout the world. Besides, the historian of 
Maryland, MeMahan. himself tells us, that the proprie- 
tary domain in Maryland had never known that hour, 
when it would have been possible for Catholics to have 
persecuted the Protestant faith. The Protestant religion 
was the established religion of the mother country, and 
the first blow aimed against this, in the colony, would 
have provoked the annihilation of their government. The 
great body of the colonists were themselves Protestants, 
and the safety of the Catholics depended upon a system 
of religious toleration. Away, then, with boasting I Dr. 
Hughes knew these facts, and shuns the force of them by 
saying: " I have seen it stated in writing — and it may 
occur to some in this assembly — that the Catholics had 
no merit in this, inasmuch as they were too weak, and 
too much afraid, to have acted otherwise. Such an obser- 
vation,^ he continues, " is more damaging to the charac- 
ter of the other two Protestant colonies than to that of 
Maryland ; for if Protestantism be that liberal, generous, 
and tolerant system, which we hear so much of, why 
should the Catholics of Maryland have been afraid of 
their neighbors ? w 

Ah ! Dr. Hughes, that question is easily answered. 
No one loves a murderer. A child can not bear — he 
will not welcome to his home and board the murderer 
of a father, or a brother, or a sister, or a mother beloved. 
Catholics had been busy doing that very thing all over 
Europe. There was hardly a settler in New England 
who was not in some way linked to some martyr, whose 



180 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

life had been taken by the Catholic hell-hounds, who 
had tracked their kindred from their homes, or the 
altars of their God, into the recesses of forests, the 
fastnesses of mountains, or the wild and sequestered 
glen or recess of the rocky or hidden cave. Here, 
seizing them, they had hurled them down precipices, 
burned them at stakes, broken them on wheels, killed 
them in the chambers of the Inquisition, and in a thou- 
sand hated forms had murdered their brethren in blood 
and their brethren in faith. It was for this reason the 
Catholic was hated, shunned and despised. He was looked 
upon as a murderer. His hands had been imbrued 
with their kindred's blood, and they would not and did 
not cherish them as brothers, or welcome them as 
friends. 

Maryland disposed of, let us now follow in the track 
of the distinguished orator, as he leads us to New York. 
He says : " But it was not in Maryland alone that the 
Catholics, in the early history of the colonies, gave proof 
of their devotedness to the principle of civil and religious 
liberty. The State archives of New York furnish tes- 
timonies in this respect, not less honorable than those 
of Maryland. 

"In 1609, the North river kissed, for the first time, 
the prow of a European vessel. From this beginning 
resulted, at a later period of our history, Fort Manhattan, 
next New Amsterdam, and the province of New Nether- 
lands ; now, however, the city and State of New York. 
The colony of New Amsterdam and New Netherlands 
had been in existence, under the sway of a Protestant 
government, from that time till 1683; and as yet, 
strange as it may sound in the ears of my auditory, not 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 181 

a single ray of liberty, an we understand it, — [mark 
that: as we understand it] — had dawned on the inhab- 
itants of New Netherlands. This is queer if, as is 
sometimes assumed, all liberty must necessarily come 
from Protestantism. The English took possession of 
the province in 1664, and the territory extending from 
the banks of the Connecticut to those of the Delaware, 
was granted by Charles the Second to his brother 
James, Duke of York and Albany. In 1673, the 
authority of Holland was once more temporarily estab- 
lished: but at the close of the war in the following 
year, the province was finally restored to England. 
The Duke of York took out a new patent. He was a 
Catholic, and although the school-books say he was a 
tyrant, still it is a fact of history, that to him the 
New Netherlands, whether Dutch or English, were 
indebted for their first possession and exercise of civil 
liberty." 

I know of no trial equal to that which one is forced 
to experience, when he is compelled to see truth cruci- 
fied and torn limb from limb, in the shocking and 
barbarous manner that has characterized this defense 
of the Catholic faith. The Duke of Y^ork the establisher 
of religious liberty in New Y r ork ! ! Was there ever a 
falsehood sent forth to a credulous people, so gross and 
black as this ? Dare Archbishop Hughes mangle his- 
tory, distort the imagery of truth, and attempt to clothe 
the black, festering and polluted character of James II. 
with angel robes, in the face and eyes of a reading 
world, while the tongue of history is permitted to speak 
forth in thunder tones to the world, saying: "Dr. 
Hughes, you are guilty of falsehood — you are not to 



182 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

be believed ? " I must confess that I was utterly con- 
founded when I read this passage, and was more than 
confounded when I came to refresh my memory by 
referring to the history of the times about which he 
professes to speak. That cause must, indeed, be a bad 
one, that is driven to depend on falsehoods direct, and 
history belied and wrongly quoted, to substantiate a 
claim of so little importance, as that the Duke of York 
did do anything for the possession and exercise of civil 
and religious liberty in the New Netherlands. Who 
was this Duke of York? He was James II., brother of 
Charles II., of England, who, after the decease of his 
brother, was raised to the throne of England. He was 
the bigoted Catholic, who imprisoned and enslaved thou- 
sands of faithful subjects, because they differed from him 
in belief. Singularly blind to universal principles — ever 
plodding with sluggish diligence — he was unable to con- 
form his conduct to a general rule. " Freedom of con- 
science/' says Bancroft, " always an ennobling conception, 
was, in that age, an idea yet standing on the threshhold 
of the world, waiting to be ushered in ; and none but 
exalted minds — Eoger Williams, and Penn, Vane, Fox 
and Bunyan — went forth to welcome it ; no glimpse of 
it reached James, whose selfish policy, unable to gain 
immediate dominion for his persecuted priests and his 
confessor, begged at least for toleration. Debauching 
a woman on promise of marriage, he next allowed her 
to be traduced, as having yielded to frequent prostitu- 
tion, and then married her. He was conscientious, but 
his moral sense was as slow as his understanding. He 
was not blood-thirsty ; but to a narrow mind fear seems 
the most powerful instrument of government, and he 



IN AMERICAN HI-TORY. 



183 



propped his throne with the block and gallonrg. A lib- 
ertine without love, a devotee without spirituality, an 
advocate of toleration without a sense of the natural 
rio-ht to freedom of conscience — in him the muscular 
force prevailed over the intellectual. He floated be- 
tween the sensuality of indulgence and the sensuality 
of superstition, hazarding heaven for an ugly mistr 
and, to the great delight of abbots and nuns, winning 
it back again by pricking his flesh with sharp points of 
iron, and eating no meat on Saturdays. Of the two 
brothers the Duke of Buckingham said well : * Charles 
would not and James could not see.' n Such is the 
character of the so-called founder of religious liberty in 
New York, as drawn by the pen of Mr. Bancroft. 

The colonists demanded liberty. Andros. the Gover- 
nor of the colony, wrote to James, requesting of him 
time and again that the people might convene assem- 
blies, make their own laws, and protect their own 
rights. The reply of James, in which, Bancroft re- 
marks, the Duke of York put his whole character, is 
as follows : 

"I cannot but suspect assemblies would be of dan- 
gerous consequence ; nothing being more known than 
the aptness of such bodies to assume to themselves 
privileges which prove destructive to, or very often 
disturb the peace of government, when they are al- 
lowed. Neither do I see any u<e for them. Things 
that need redress mav be sure of finding it at the 
quarter sessions, or by the legal and ordinary ways, or, 
lastly, by appeals to myself.*' 

Such was the reply of the champion of civil and 
religious liberty* The people — the yeomanry — began 



184 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

to yearn for freedom. " Prompted by an exalted in- 
stinct, they demanded power to govern themselves ; and 
though their leaders, for seeking this right, were 
thrown into prison, the fixed purpose of the great body 
of the people remained unshaken. Everything breathed 
hope, except the cupidity of the Duke of York and his 
commissioners. The land yielded plentifully ; flocks 
and herds were multiplying ; wealth began to pour her 
treasures into the lap of the diligent and frugal, and 
everything about them and above them was pleasant 
and inviting, save the hated power of James. At last, 
after long effort," continues Bancroft, " on the 17th 
day of October, 1683, about seventeen years after Man- 
hattan was first occupied, and about thirty years after 
the demand of the popular convention by the Dutch, the 
Bepresentatives of the people met in assembly, and 
their self-established ' Charter of Liberties ' gave 
New York a place by the side of Virginia and Mas- 
sachusetts." Now this, be it remembered, is quoted 
by Dr. Hughes as though it were proving statements 
already made, viz : that " it is a fact of history that 
to him, James II., the inhabitants of New Netherlands, 
whether Dutch or English, were indebted for their first 
possession and exercise of civil and religious liberty" — 
while, in fact, the extract quoted by Dr. Hughes, in the 
connection which it sustains to the preceding and fol- 
lowing portions of history, proves exactly the opposite, 
i. e., it proves that the people themselves, on the 
17th of October, 1683, met in open assembly, and their 
self-established charter of liberties — i. e., the people's, 
not the self-established charter of liberties of James II. 
— gave New York a place by the side of Virginia and 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 185 

Massachusetts. Therefore, T say, without fear of con- 
tradiction, that it is not a fact of history that James II. 
gave the people of New Netherlands liberty. They 
obtained it for themselves. This is the decision of 
history and of fact ; he who denies or asserts to the 
contrary is guilty of falsehood, and should be held up 
to the execration of mankind. 

" Supreme legislative power — such was the declara- 
tion of the people in their charter of liberty — shall 
forever be and reside in the governor, council and people, 
met in general assembly. Every freeholder and free- 
man shall vote for representation without restraint. 
No freeman shall suffer but by judgment of his pe- 
and all trials shall be by a jury of twelve men. No 
tax shall be assessed, on any pretence whatever, but by 
the consent of the assembly. No seaman or soldier 
shall be quartered on the inhabitants against their will. 
No martial law shall exist. No person professing faith 
in God by Jesus Christ, shall at any time be anyways 
disquieted or questioned for any difference of opinion. " 
Such were the principles upon which the colonists en- 
deavored to found a representative form of government. 
But this hope was to be deferred. Four years have 
passed, and the Duke of York is King of England. 
14 It shows the true character of James/ 7 continues 
Bancroft — page 416, vol. II. — "that on gaining power 
by ascending the English throne, he immediately threw 
down the institutions which he had conceded." 

Thus did the so-called founder of freedom in New 

York sequester their liberties, impose taxes too severe 

to be borne, and carry on a hand of outrage and daring 

insolence, until death took from the world an arch- 

16 



186 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

hypocrite, a blood-thirsty bigot, and a narrow-minded, 
selfish man. When William, Prince of Orange, drove 
the old man, deserted by his kin and despised by his 
subjects, from the English throne, England and the 
world rejoiced ; for, instead of his being a friend to lib- 
erty, he had been its bitterest foe in England, in Mas- 
sachusetts, Ehode Island, Connecticut and New York. 
Instead of building up her altars, he prostrated them 
in the dust. He invaded the sanctuary of Ehode 
Island, and leveled with the ground the hopes of free- 
dom and religion. 

Let us now turn to another clause of the Bishop's 
lecture. He says: " Already in 1784, Rhode Island 
had removed the only blemish in her laws on this sub- 
ject ; a brief disqualifying clause against Eoman 
Catholics." 

Now, if Mr. Hughes had read his, Bancroft's History, 
volume 2d, page 66, he would have found these words : 
" The first assembly, that met in March, 1665, (instead 
of 1784) did little more than organize the government 
anew and repeal all laws inconsistent with the charter," 
— a repeal which precludes the possibility of the disen- 
franchising of Roman Catholics. In May the regular 
session was held, and religious freedom was established 
in the very words of the charter. The broad terms 
embraced not Roman Catholics merely, but men of every 
creed. " No person shall at any time hereafter be any 
ways called in question for any difference of opinion in 
matters of religion. " As if to preserve a record that 
should refute the calumny, in May, 1665, the Legisla- 
ture asserted that "Liberty to all persons, as to the 
worship of God, had been a principle maintained in the 



IX AMERICAN HISTORY. 187 

colony from the very beginning thereof, and it was 
much in their hearts to preserve the same liberty for- 
ever." To make it still more certain, the commission- 
ers from England, who visited Rhode Island, reported 
of them : " They allow liberty of conscience to all who 
live civilly; they admit of all religions." And again, 
in 1G80, the government of the colony could say, " We 
leave every man to walk as God has persuaded his 
heart ; all our people enjoy freedom of conscience." 
Freedom of conscience, unlimited freedom of mind, was. 
from the first, the trophy of the Baptists, and to render 
this truth beyond the reach of confutation, we find Mr. 
Bancroft saying: "I have carefully examined the 
records, and find that the people of Rhode Island, on 
accepting their charter, affirmed the great principle of 
intellectual liberty in its widest scop 

Truly, it becomes us, when investigating Catholic 
claims, whether in Europe or America, to prove all 
things, and hold fast to that which is true. The lecture 
which has now passed in review, was written to deceive a 
candid public, and to impose upon the good faith of three 
millions of deluded followers, deprived of the right or 
privilege of investigation, who are obliged to believe a 
lying priesthood, and worship in an idolatrous church. 
It is sad to contemplate the future of these benighted 
millions, whose leaders are driven to resort to such 
measures to keep their errors in countenance before an en- 
lightened public. Truth needs no such assistance, and 
error finds here a certain destruction — a sure overthrow — 

Ferat qui meruit palmam. 
This palm belongs to Roger Williams, and never can be 
claimed for Lord Calvert. Calvert limited his toleration 



188 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

to a few Trinitarian sects — the philanthropy of Wil- 
liams compassed the earth. Calvert entered a special 
plea for Eomanists, under the specious garb of toleration 
for other sects. Williams would permit persecution of 
no opinion, or religion, leaving heresy unharmed by law, 
and orthodoxy unprotected by the terrors of penal statutes. 
If Copernicus is held in perpetual reverence, because, on 
his death-bed, he published to the world that the sun is 
the centre of our system — if the genius of Newton has 
been almost adored for dissecting a ray of light, and 
weighing heavenly bodies as in a balance— if Washington 
is permitted to wear the proud title of the Father of his 
Country — surely the name of Williams deserves a bright 
and conspicuous place in that roll of great names, that do 
honor to their race, and shed glory upon the world. For 
when the world was dark with the night of persecution, 
Williams, without precedent, unfurled the standard of 
soul-liberty, and kindled in the wilderness a light which 
has flashed beams of hope across the sky of a world's 
future. 



LS AMERICAN HISTORY. 189 



CHAPTER VIII. 

VIEWS OF THE PAPISTS WITH REGARD TO 
THE UNITED STATES, ETC. 

The purposes and plan 9 of the Papal Hierarchy — How they regard 
the United States — The Secret Societies of Europe plotting the 
overthrow of the Republic — A contrast between Catholic and 
Protestant Missionaries. 

When Columbus, wearied with delay, after eighteen 
years of fruitless negotiation and trial at the Castilian 
Court, mounted his mule, and took leave of his friends, 
intending to secure the assistance in France which wa3 
denied him in Spain, the few friends who sympathized 
with him, and adopted his theory, seeing that the golden 
opportunity of discovery was being transferred to another 
Court, became alarmed, and clamorously demanded an 
audience of the Queen. Luis de St. Angel led the way. 
The exigence of the moment gave him courage and elo- 
quence. He did not confine himself to remonstrance 
and entreaty, but almost mingled reproaches with suppli- 
cations, expressing astonishment that a Queen, who had 
evinced the spirit to undertake so many great and peril- 
ous enterprises, should hesitate at one where the loss 
could be so trifling, while the gain might be incalculable. 

He reminded her how much might be done for tho 
glory of God, the exaltation of the church, and the exten- 
sion of her own power and dominion. The appeal had 
its desired effect, and Columbus entered at once upon his 



190 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

preparations for discovery. " One of his principal objects 
was, undoubtedly, the propagation of the Christian faith. 
He expected to arrive at the extremity of Asia, to open 
a direct communication with the magnificent realms 
of the Grand Khan. The conversion of that heathen 
potentate, had, in former times, been a favorite aim of 
various Eoman pontiffs. The heart of the pious Catholic 
who believes God the author of his thought of discovery, 
kindles with a glow of lofty enthusiasm, as he peers into 
the future, across unknown seas, and calls up by the 
wand of imagination, the pictures, resplendent with glory, 
which were ever passing in review before his eye. We 
wonder not, that his audience, composed of priests and 
cardinals, kings and pontiffs, were elated at the prospect. 
They saw a new world peopled with the denizens of 
Courts and palaces, covered with gold and hung with 
shining tapestry. The church was to be enriched with 
untold wealth, the banners of her loyal sons were to be 
covered with glory, and thousands were to be joined to 
her communion. 

Then, when in after years the dream gave way to 
reality, when reports disclosed an immense continent, 
peopled by natives who were easily induced to adopt the 
ceremonies of the church, missionaries from her altars 
took the place of the soldiery, and went forth bearing the 
breviary and the cross. We have seen how they began 
with the St. Lawrence, pushed their way up rivers and 
across lakes, through forests and over mountains, until 
they had taken possession of this wide domain, in the 
name of their sovereign and church. 

Different orders of missionaries became rivals in dis- 
coveries. Reports tinged with romance, were returned 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 191 

to Europe, arousing, as tliey went, the zeal of their 
brethren at home. Colleges were established at Mont- 
real, and fair women shared the dangers of brave men in 
building up the interests of the cross. They sought to 
bring all the scattered tribes of Indians into the Chris- 
tian fold. But these herculean efforts failed to accom- 
plish very much, either for the church or the world. 
Their converts relapsed back into heathenism, so soon as 
the chapel bell ceased to call them together at m; 
and in a few years not a trace was left behind, of the 
dangers encountered and braved by the faithful mis- 
sionary. 

The Indian faded away before the march of the white 
man. Cities rose as by magic, forests were leveled, and 
a new civilization spread the regis of its protection over 
the land. The church, equal to the exigencies of the 
limes, planned new conquests, not by means of the sword, 
nor by priestly influence, so much as by pouring into 
our midst, her trusty sons, who Bought an asylum from 
persecution, and a place of rest. From the conquest of 
Canada to the close of the Revolution, very little was done 
by Catholic Europe in America. War and revolution 
were rampant in Europe, and the armies of the Kings 
of France and Austria, and the Pope, of William of 
Orange, and others, were recruited from the lower walks 
of life. An unyielding purpose was manifest in every 
State not to yield to Catholic aggression. Anti-Catholic 
riots were frequent in Xew York and Philadelphia, and 
in no place more than in Catholic Maryland. Pwomanism 
was at a low ebb. But when the fires of the Revolution 
were over, when peace became the boon shared by all, 
then the wave of emigration bewail to flow, which has 



192 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

gone on sweeping westward, until millions of foreign- 
born Catholics share in the blessings secured by the 
founders of the republic. The immigration to this 
country was, from 1790 to 1810, 120,000 ; from 1810 to 
1820, 114,000 ; from 1820 to 1830, 203,979 ; from 1830 
to 1840, 778,500 ; and from 1840 to 1850, 542,850. Du- 
ring the last five years the tide has poured in upon us in an 
increased ratio. At the present time the hierarchy of the 
Eomish church among us, is far more numerous than that 
of Eoman Catholic Ireland, and is nearly equal to that 
of Ireland, England, and Scotland. " Seventy years 
ago/ 7 said Archbishop Hughes, in his lecture delivered 
at Baltimore, January 17, 1856, " there were twenty-two 
or twenty -three priests ; now there are seventeen hun- 
dred and sixty-one priests. Then there was no bishop, 
now there are seven archbishops, and thirty -five bishops." 
In Ireland there are but twenty-eight bishops and arch- 
bishops ; in England there are thirteen bishops, and in 
Scotland there are four bishops, making a total of forty- 
jive in England, Scotland, and Ireland, and forty in the 
United States of America. Seventy years ago, there 
were but four churches, and now there are nineteen hun- 
dred and ten churches, beside other out-stations to the 
number of eight hundred and ninety-five. Then there 
Avas no Catholic seminary, now there are thirty-seven, 
twenty four colleges, and one hundred and thirty female 
academies. 

About the year 1780, the Catholics of New York laid 
the corner-stone of their first house of worship. Now, 
Archbishop Hughes rules over a vast multitude, and con- 
trols some six millions of church property. 

It appears from the history of Catholicism in Maryland, 



IX AMERICAN HISTORY. 193 

and throughout the United States, that the church 
does not possess an aggressive power. Though Arch- 
bishop Hughes boasts of an immense accession by conver- 
sion from the Protestant faith, yet when we remember, 
that there are now in this country, some eleven millions 
of foreign-born, and the descendants of foreigners, and 
that of this immense number, the principal part of whom 
were Catholics, either by profession or baptism, there are 
not now three millions of communicants, we perceive a 
fact which has alarmed Romanists here and in Europe. 
To counteract the influence of our free institutions, the 
Leopold Society was formed in 1829. 

" North America," said F. Schlegel, in an address 
delivered in Vienna, in 1828, " is the nursery of the 
destructive principles which undermine the faith of 
Catholics, and forms the revolutionary school for France 
and the rest of Europe." The Emperor of Austria, 
Prince Metternich and Leo XII. established the Leopold 
Society, for the avowed purpose of aiding the church of 
Home in the subjugation of the American people to the 
Roman Catholic worship. At the time of its organiza- 
tion, the Pope issued a bull granting indulgence and 
remission of sins to all those who should contribute 
funds to aid the society. The tenth article reads, " that 
masses shall be said for the souls of all contributors, 
after their death." 

The Leopold Society is a political institution, under 
the control of the Austrian Cabinet and the Pope of 
Rome. It was called into existence at the earnest 
solicitation of American bishops, who supplicated aid to 
enable them to stay the onward march of truth. It 
seizes upon the religious principle, as rn all the enter- 
17 



194 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

prises of the church, to give life and energy to its move- 
ments, but aims at nothing less than the overthrow of 
civil and religious liberty. The plans of this society 
have been formed with the political sagacity that 
characterized the church in her palmiest days. 

In the reports of 1837, proposed by Stephen de 
Dubuisson, a Jesuit, and missionary of the society in 
the United States, we find this language : " Without 
wishing to penetrate the future, it is certain that the 
plan is gigantic and of great importance, to bring the 
whole nation, which inhabits the immense country of 
the United States, into the bosom of the Catholic church. 
Whatever may be the future political condition of this 
people ; whether they will retain their republican insti- 
tutions, or choose a monarchy ; whether they succeed 
in holding their negroes in slavery, or they revolt and 
become masters of a part of the soil ; whatever may be 
their character and manners — if they be or be not like 
those of their European brethren — and though their 
civil institutions may oppose more or less hindrances to 
the spread and establishment of Eeligion ; it is certain 
that this population, which moves forward with gigantic 
strides, presents a rich field for the spread of the holy 
Gospel." 

Thus we see American bishops, in an Austrian coun- 
cil, coolly calculating the chances of the subservience 
of our liberties, and waiting with longing for the time 
to come when she may grasp the helm of power, when- 
ever revolution, however instigated, shall work our ruin. 
The recent concordat between the Pope and Emperor of 
Austria is an alliance of despotism. We shall see that 
they propose to destroy our government by subjugation. 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 195 

It is a significant fact that Romanists always ride with 
despotism — that the Pope leans upon those rulers who 
are trampling upon the liberties of Europe — that the 
Pope bargained for the appointment of a Catholic Post- 
master-General, who controls a Department second in 
importance to none within the gift of the people — that 
the Democratic party is pro-slavery in its character, and 
that the Catholic church is foremost in its defense. 
The boast was made, in Rome, by a leading dignitary 
in the Church of Rome, that the republic would break 
into fragments upon the rock of slavery ; that then 
Mexico would be joined to a Southern Confedei 
which would enable the Church of Rome to elect the 
candidate whose principles and course of conduct would 
best subserve her policy. 

This is but a speck dotting the sky of a future full 
of gloom. Who dare say that this speck will not yet 
spread right over our free land, veiling forever the 
glorious sun of freedom, which has for half a century 
been causing the thrones of Europe to cast the shadow 
of their evening ? 

In the meantime the church is not idle. The reports 
of the society give the modus operandi of her laborious 
struggle. Xunneries occupy a conspicuous place. The 
church of Rome is composed, to a great extent, of servant 
girls and poor day-laborers, who are unable to read, 
and who commit their souls' keeping to the church. 
Many of the girls look forward with joyous anticipation 
to a place in a convent or nunnery. There they learn 
to care for the sick in hospitals — they administer io the 
passions of the priests, and the menial wants of the 
higher orders. The system of Romanism provides ser- 



196 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

vants, who, like the frogs of Egypt, come into our very- 
bread -troughs. They report secrets learned at the fire- 
side — music teachers gain access to our parlors and 
drawing-rooms — Jesuits peer into every nook and corner 
of society — each and all reporting all that will further 
the interests of the organization. 

The formation of a native American priesthood is 
another object contemplated in their report. These, it 
was thought, would have an advantage over a foreign- 
born clergy in gaining access to our countrymen. This 
idea has, to a great extent, been abandoned, as they 
do not prove as pliant tools as is desirable for the 
purposes of the church. 

Prior to the American Kevolution, the clergy was 
composed of Jesuits, educated abroad, as they were 
denied a collegiate course here, so long as this country 
remained a colony of Great Britain. The American- 
born were educated in Europe, but the spiritual orders 
were supplied by immigration from foreign courts and 
monasteries. The Bishop of Vincennes gives to the 
Jesuits the credit " of laying the foundations of the 
church in Maryland. The fathers of the Dominican 
order have long labored, in Kentucky and Ohio, for the 
same end. The Lazarists, in Missouri, and the Eedemp- 
tionists, in Michigan, have done essential service to the 
American church." 

Since the Revolution, the Jesuits have opened colleges 
in different portions of the Union. The report continues, 
showing the progress in church-building, and the aid 
received from Europe, by which they have been enabled 
to adorn them with paintings, utensils and ornaments : 

" From what has been said, it will be seen that from 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 107 

the commencement, Catholicism in the United States 
owes its propagation chiefly to spiritual orders, (the 
Jesuits,) who oversee all the parishes, and perform all 
the parochial duties, while the expense of their educa- 
tion has been defrayed, not by dioceses or bishops, but 
by their own order ; and we flatter ourselves that the 
benevolent society in Europe will devote a still larger 
part of their gifts to the training of a native American 
clergy." 

We have given these extracts to show by Catholic 
authority that the dependence of the papal church is on 
the Jesuits for success. They are said to be the most 
effective laborers in the United States. Reference is 
made to the Dominicans, the inquisition men of Europe. 
This Leopold Society is in constant intercourse with the 
Jesuits of this country, and is laboring, both by pen and 
sword — by money and intrigue — to destroy our liberties 
and fetter our progress as a nation. 

In 1840, Archbishop Hughes visited Vienna person- 
ally, to obtain money from this society, to advocate and 
support a priesthood in this country. In that report he 
said : " The zeal with which Catholics build churches 
arises from the longing wish for priests. When the 
church is built they wait anxiously for a priest to come 
among them. This is their chief aim, their great object." 
The policy of the Bishop is evident. The emigrant is 
forced on his arrival here to contribute of his mite to 
build a church, with the promise that, when completed, 
the priest shall be forthcoming. The property is vested 
in the bishop. Their spiritual supply comes from them. 
Their contributions all go into real investments, and 
therefore the congregation have nothing to do with the 



198 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

kind of a supply they receive. How different is the 
course pursued by the Protestant churches. The Bap- 
tist church sends forth her pioneers. They ford rivers, 
scale mountains, crowd their way through dense forests, 
that they may reach some remote settlement famishing 
for the bread of life. With heaven's blue for a cover- 
ing, and a rude platform for a pulpit, they proclaim the 
unsearchable riches of Christ, and thousands are made 
heirs of an heavenly inheritance, who never enter a 
roofed cathedral. It is the same with the Methodist 
and Presbyterian churches. They disregard the loaves 
and fishes, and work for a hire which is laid away 
where moth and rust doth not corrupt. 

With the church of Eome it is all policy. The priest 
labors to advance the temporal interests of the church 
rather than the spiritual interests of the congregation. 
There is no individuality in their gospel. The church 
is the center to the circumference of their thought. 
The Leopold society labors not for the salvation of 
Americans, but simply to build up a church establish- 
ment that shall be worthy of the past precedents of 
Eoman dominion. To do this, thousands of dollars are 
sent over every year. Their money and their influence 
find their way to the pine-covered hills of Maine, and 
the cotton savannas of the South. The Jesuit may be 
seen on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts alike. They 
penetrate every nook and corner of our wide domain, 
and are ever busy weaving a net with which they hope 
to entangle and fetter the free spirit of our institutions. 
But this society is weak in contrast with The Society 
for the Propagation of the Faith. 

This Society was established in Lyons, in 1822. It 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 199 

is now by far the largest missionary establishment in 
the world. In 1815, 107,000 copies of the " Annals" 
were printed, viz: 06,000 French, 18,500 German, 
13,500 English, 1,000 Spanish, 4,800 Flemish, 29,000 
Italian, 2,500 Portuguese, 1,000 Dutch and 500 Polish. 
This number, published six times a year, gives a total 
of one million two thousand copies, which are scattered 
throughout the world. 

This Society forms a part of the original plan for the 
subjugation of the United States to the Hierarchy of 
Rome. Bulls of Indulgence have been issued for all 
those who would contribute to its funds, by Pius VII., 
Leo XL, Pius VIIL, Gregory XVI. and Pius IX. Two 
kinds of indulgences have been published for the bene- 
fit of all the donors of this Society. 

1. A plenary indulgence to the souls in purgatory. 
This indulgence is granted on the festival of the Holy 
Cross, the anniversary of the first establishment of the 
Society, in 1822, on the festival of St. Francis Xavier, 
patron of the Society, and also once a month on any 
day at the choice of the subscriber. 

2. An indulgence of a hundred days for every dona- 
tion, with the prescribed number of prayers. 

To a Protestant, this scheme of raising money is 
simply ridiculous. But the conscientious Romanist is 
taught to believe that by his contributions to the Soci- 
ety, he can relieve the souls of his friends from the 
awful and intolerable sufferings of purgatory. At the 
same time he can obtain release for himself from all 
the punishment due to his sins for a hundred days, by 
every donation he makes. Thus, the most solemn and 
weighty motives are appealed to. With what success, 



200 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

let the fact, that Ireland, in 1846, while famine was 
wasting her sons, drew from her exhausted bosom 
$28,000 to aid in the propagation of the faith in Amer- 
ica, show. The contributions of these foreign societies, 
made for the same object, furnish evidence of the 
interest felt by pampered Europe in the subjugation of 
this country to a foreign despotism. 

Annually, the Bishop of America and societies em- 
ployed for " the propagation of the faith" receive more 
than a half a million of dollars, which enables her sons 
to worship in towering cathedrals, filled with gorgeous 
imagery, hung with pictures, the product of the highest 
art. Famine, poverty and ignorance help forward the 
interests of the Hierarchy of Rome, for her sons drive 
a thrifty trade over the dying and the dead. By means 
of these immense sums we behold her bishops building 
and endowing colleges, nunneries and hospitals. They 
secure the best and most productive real estate in our 
large cities, they support missions in a country flooded 
with Gospel light, they penetrate the wilderness, and 
are enabled to compass sea and land, not to preach the 
Gospel of Christ, but to build up a colossal power which 
shall be felt in the political world, and which shall 
enable the Church of Eome to control and shape the 
destinies of the sons of the Pilgrims. It is worthy of 
notice that more money is expended upon the United 
States than in all Asia. The Society of Lyons, in four 
years, from 1839 to 1843, sent the enormous sum of 
$612,656 to this country, all for the purposes above 
specified. We need not wonder that a power backed 
up by the wealth of Europe should become arrogant 
and vain. " The church," said 0. A. Brownson, " may 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 201 

be assailed, will be assailed, but we know it is founded 
on a rock, and the gates of hell cannot prevail against 
it. It is now firmly established in this country. A 
new day is dawning on this chosen land, a new chapter 
is about to open in our history, and the Church to 
assume her rightful position and influence. Our hills 
and our valleys shall yet echo to the convent bell. Xo 
matter who w r rites, who declaims, who intrigues, who is 
alarmed, or what leagues are formed, this is to be a 
Catholic country; from Maine to Georgia, from the 
broad Atlantic to the broader Pacific, the clean sacrifice 
is to be offered up daily for the quick and dead." 

Of this country, the Society at Lyons speaks as fol- 
lows : "At a late hour heresy made her appearance, 
and led to the coasts of North America the most violent 
of her disciples, the restless Puritans. Soon other sects 
cast their scum on the same shores, and Protestantism 
gained sovereignty in the thirteen States/' Yet the 
Catholic Church could never abandon the invaded terri- 
tory. Judge Haliburton uses this language : 

" The Catholic Church bids fair to rise in importance. 
They gain constantly ; they gain more by emigration, 
more by natural increase in proportion to their numbers, 
more by intermarriages, adoption and conversion than 
Protestants." It should be remembered that, though 
Protestants aid in founding orphan asylums, yet the 
child of Protestant parentage becomes a Catholic on his 
entrance, and every attempt is made to continue the 
subjection. He continues : " With their exclusive views 
of salvation and peculiar tenets, as soon as they have 
the majority, this becomes a Catholic country, with 
a Catholic government, with the Catholic religion 



202 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

established by law. The cooperation of other European 
nations, in promoting the objects of the Society, is most 
desirable, particularly -of those possessing a redundant 
Eoman Catholic population. The Western districts 
may be said to have a particular claim to the patronage 
of France, as it was under their former sovereignty 
that their vast resources were discovered." These ex- 
tracts furnish us a key with which to unlock the mys- 
teries of immigration. 

The Duke of Eichmond, Ex-Governor of Canada, said, 
in a speech at Montreal, " The government of the United 
States ought not to stand, and it will not stand ; but it 
will be destroyed by subversion, and not by conquest. 
The plan is this — to send over the surplus population of 
Europe : they will go over with foreign views and feel- 
ings, and form a heterogeneous mass, and in time will 
be prepared to rise and subvert the government. I have 
conversed with many of the sovereigns of Europe, and 
they have unanimously expressed their determination to 
subvert the government of the United States" 

" Americans, take care ! " said Gavazzi. u Carry my 
words home with you, and ponder on them in your pri- 
vacy. Monks ask money ; they can not live without 
it — they prefer the best of everything. You have already 
many in this country, and you will have more. They 
can not live without money. I know what I speak of ; 
do not forget that I was a long time among them. When 
I was in Parma, I read original accounts that there was 
sent, every year, nearly a million of francs, for Eoman 
Catholic purposes, and especially thirty-five thousand 
francs to support the College of Jesuits, near New York. 
Thus for the past, and in part for the present, the 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 203 

papists of Italy, France, etc., maintain the Jesuits in 
your country, with their money ; but wait a little ! 
When they are once established, they will support them- 
selves with your money." 

" All monks are dangerous ; but the most dangerous 
order is the Jesuits ; a sad and awful theme ! May God 
spare your America from the fatal ordeal, through which 
all the old continent passed, having for its directors these 
satanical Jesuits. And you have them now — you have 
them everywhere, openly and in disguise ; you have 
them at work, and strong work against you. You have 
hundreds, you may have thousands of them imeng you. 
The world likes to be deceived ; it likes men of simple, 
devout, and humble appearance : the Jesuits know the 
world, and they appear simple, devout, and humble. But 
they are all the same, and under this clothing of the 
lamb they all carry one heart — the heart of the wolf. 
Americans, look back to your history. Without monks, 
and especially without Jesuits, your fathers made their 
glorious independence, and your present powerful free- 
dom. And you must preserve it ; and as the monastical 
institutions, and especially the Jesuits, are substantially 
against republican liberties, so the life of America totally 
depends on the death of all monastic orders in the coun- 
try of Washington. Eemember what Ceno, the great 
Catholic Spanish divine, said about these Jesuits, * They 
found the Spaniards eagles, and turned them into hens. 7 
No, no, no ! the honest pride of the American eagle never 
shall be subjected to such abasement ! Before it be 
deplumed by these spiritual orders, I hope to see it, by 
its strong claws, carry all of them out of the Union, cry- 
ing then to Americans, ■ Now you are really free. 7 n 



204 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

We have familiarized ourselves with the boast, that 
this is to be — not that it is, as Archbishop Hughes con- 
tends — but is to be a Catholic country. It is proper to 
inquire, as to what kind of rulers are to subjugate us. 
The Rambler, the organ of Cardinal Wiseman, declares 
that " Catholicism is the most intolerant of creeds." 
Protestantism is to be extirpated, for the Bishop of St. 
Louis asserts, that Catholicity enumerates every kind of 
Protestantism in her catalogue of mortal sins. " She 
endures it when and where she must, but she hates it, 
and directs all her energies to effect its destruction. If 
the Catholics ever gain, which they surely will, an im- 
mense numerical majority, religious freedom in this 
country is at endP 

Thus far, Catholicism has made progress in this coun- 
try by immigration. That source is drying up. A con- 
trast of Catholic and Protestant missions, presents, in a 
condensed space, the power of the two systems. The Ro- 
man Catholic Church numbers 170,000,000 ; the Protest- 
ant population numbers 80,000,000. In 1850, the 
Catholic church collected, throughout the world, aided by 
her vast machinery, but a little more than three millions 
of francs. Among Protestants, it is not a single society 
that we meet with ; the associations outnumber the 
nationalities. Leaving the Tract and Bible societies out, 
we find the Missionary Societies raised some fifteen mil- 
lion francs. Thus, against three millions francs, col- 
lected by Roman Catholics, for the Missionary cause, we 
have to place fifteen millions francs, collected for the 
same cause in Protestant countries — a sum five times 
greater, furnished by a population of less than one-half. 

In comparing results of labor, we find a contrast still 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 205 

more remarkable. The Cathcdio missions, established 
under auspices so flattering that all Europe rung with 
the praises of the devoted Missionaries of the Gross, have 
to a great extent, in Paraguay, throughout South Amer- 
ica, among the Indians of North America, and in many 
of the islands of the sea, died out, and left not a trace 
behind. While those established by Protestants, in 
India, in the Sandwich Islands, Huong the Cherokees 
of the South, and other Western tribes, are now in a 
flourishing condition. Under their auspices, civilization, 
agriculture, literature, and the arts have flourished; 
men have been taken from the native ranks and educa- 
ted, until they have created for themselves a name, and 
for their race a literature that betokens a brilliant fu- 
ture for those lands once shrouded in the rayless night 
of Pagan idolatry and superstition. 

The cause that lies back of this difference in results 
is easily traced. A Protestant missionary is generally 
accompanied by a school-master, a surgeon, and some- 
times by an artisan capable of building a house or 
printing a book. "This last directs our attention 
immediately to one of the first objects of the missionary 
caravan : a press, or at least books. The school-master, 
the doctor, the artisan, we foresee, will each and all 
help to announce the Gospel in their special depart- 
ments." 

" Having reached the appointed station in the midst 
of a people, whose language is neither known beyond 
their own country, nor written within it, the first em- 
ployment of the mission is to learn this, or commit it 
to writing. While they are reducing it to the rules of 
grammar, they are also printing a Gospel as well as a 



206 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

dictionary, and thus bringing the nation or tribe within 
the pale of civilization. Now we must bear in mind 
that this method is not arbitrarily chosen ; it is but the 
necessary development of the Protestant system, which 
is to teach the written word — the sacred Scriptures." 
Wherever you follow the footsteps of the Protestant 
missionary, you are sure to find printing-presses estab- 
lished — schools and colleges are founded, and the poor 
have the Gospel preached to them. 

Such, then, are the external modes of action of the 
Protestant missionary ; and his baggage consists of a 
book, a printing-press, and a case of surgical instru- 
ments. Now. let us inquire into that of the Romish 
missionary. The list furnished by himself runs thus : 
" A breviary for his own private use, a missal for the 
services of his church, plate for communion, chaplets, 
crucifixes, medals and images for his converts." 

This prepares us for the course of action in which we 
may expect to find the Romish missionary engaged, 
among the brethren by whom he is surrounded; his 
object is not to instruct, but to baptize, and to enroll a 
list of names. He has no need to make a study of a 
language, in order to teach a people to write that which 
they already speak ; and all he requires is such fluency 
in the colloquial idiom, as may enable him to converse 
with the natives. It is a means of securing conquests 
to himself, not of conversions to Christ or the doctrines 
of the Gospel. He avails himself of it, not only to 
teach what he chooses to explain, but to conceal what he 
desires to hide. With his death all germs of knowledge 
die out, and the converts relapse into barbarism. The 
Protestant missionary, leaves a written language and 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 207 

the means of introducing not onlj religious knowledge, 
but the arts and sciences. Ministers are ordained and 
churches are established, in accordance with the princi- 
ples of the New Testament, and the Gospel is preached, 
which works like leaven among the masses, sending 
forth streams of influence into the hidden recesses of 
society, and making arid wastes to blossom as the rose. 
Fifteen millions of francs given annually by Protest- 
ant churches — two thousand missionaries leaving their 
homes for distant lands — eight hundred thousand pa- 
gans converted, and whole countries brought under the 
reign of the Prince of Peace — this is working for God 
and man — not for self nor party. Such philanthropy 
begirts the globe, and this benevolence cheers while it 
illumines the path of sorrowing humanity. 



208 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 



CHAPTER IX. 

FOREIGN RELATIONS OF THE UNITED 

STATES. 

Non-intervention — An American doctrine proclaimed by Washington 
and Hamilton — By whom opposed — Naturalization laws — Foreign 
influence. 

When the founders of the Eepublic were battling 
against tremendous odds, in defense of the principles of 
self-government — when the American Eevolution was 
drawing to a mournful close, because of the exhausted 
condition of the treasury, and the consequent reduction 
of the standing army — Lafayette came to our aid, bring- 
ing with him some of the bravest soldiers of France. 
It was a private undertaking, but to the unpracticed 
eye, this generous act looked like the espousal of our 
cause by the entire French nation. The acceptance of 
this aid forced the way for private adventurers, who 
came to this country for purposes of private interest, 
and sought to win laurels on the field without caring 
for the cause. 

Eeferences are frequently made, by the enemies of 
American principles, to the services of foreigners in the 
war of the Revolution, as though we were indebted to 
them, rather than to our patriotic sires, for the blessings 
of freedom. General Lafayette possessed a noble nature, 
and his endeavors seem to have been prompted by mo- 
tives of pure philanthropy. He was made the friend 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 209 



and counselor of Washington. His deeds are treasured 
up in history, and form a fitting monument, where a 
true record of his magnanimous course is enshrined. 
With regard to others, we shall let Washington and 
history speak. " I do most devoutly wish," said Wash- 
ington, in a letter to Gouverneur Morris, July 24th, 
1778, "that we had not a single foreigner among us, 
except the Marquis de Lafayette, who acts upon different 
principles from those which govern the rest." " These 
men have no attachment to the country, farther than 
interest binds them* It is by the zeal and activity 
of our own people that the cause must be supported, and 
not by a few hungry adventurer*. Our officers think it 
extremely hard, after they have toilftd in the service, 
and have sustained heavy losses, to have strangers put 
over them, whose merits, perhaps, are not equal to their 
own, but whose effrontery will take no denial. 5 ' u The 
lavish manner in which rank has hitherto been bestowed 
on these gentlemen, will certainly be productive of one 
or the other of these two evils — either to make us 
despicable in the eyes of Europe, or become a means of 
pouring them in upon us like a torrent, and adding to 
our present burden. 

"But it is neither the expense nor trouble of them I 
most dread ; there is an evil more extensive in its 
nature and fatal in its consequences, to be apprehended, 
and that is, the driving all our own officers out of the 
service, and throwing not only our own army, but our 
military councils, entirely into the hands of foreigners. 

" The officers, my dear sir, on whom you must depend 

»ToR. H.Lee, May 17, 1777. 



210 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

for the defense of this cause, distinguished by length 
of service and military merits, will not submit much 
longer to the unnatural promotion of men over them, 
who have nothing more than a little plausibility, un- 
bounded pride and ambition, and a perseverance in the 
application to support their pretensions, not to be resist- 
ed but by uncommon firmness ; men who, in the first 
instance, tell you they wish for nothing more than the 
honor of serving in so glorious a cause, as volunteers ; 
the next day solicit rank without pay ; the day after 
want money advanced to them, and in the course of a 
week want further promotion." 

To trace the history of foreign aggressions upon the 
rights of native citizens, as from time to time they have 
been made — now appearing in the form of friendly 
alliances, seeking to advance the interests of the Ke- 
public, and even making claims upon a nation's gratitude 
and prosperity, in consideration of labor performed — 
now coming to our shores with banners and fleets, sing- 
ing songs of freedom, and again presenting themselves 
at the national door as paupers asking alms ; — to show 
what has been the effect upon our institutions — how 
this foreign element has aided forward our commer- 
cial growth on one hand and retarded our progress as a 
nation in morals, in science and a healthy development 
on the other, would require volumes. It is sufficient 
for our present purpose to glance at stages and eras, 
showing by incontrovertible facts, that the nation is 
indebted to the wisdom and foresight of Washington, 
Hamilton, Adams, Morris, Jay, Knox and others for the 
great principle of non-intervention, which has permitted 
the nation, despite the clamors of foreign emissaries or 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 211 

political partisans, to move forward in a successful 
career of prosperity. Up to the year 1703, the devel- 
opment of American politics had gone on almost wholly 
from within. Native Americans were regarded by 
Washington as worthy of a trust and confidence which 
belonged not to foreigners. But, at this time, an 
important change took place, which carried the country 
back for many years to a sort of colonial dependence on 
Europe. 

France had become the theater of revolution, Louis 
XVI. had lost his life, the power was held by a Nation- 
al Convention, and Europe was intoxicated with hope, 
based on the delusive phantom of French liberty. 

" The progress of the French Revolution, from its 
first decisive start by the meeting of the States General 
almost cotemporaneously with the organization of the 
new Federal Government, had been watched in America 
with the greatest interest." Strong and sturdy doubt- 
ers of success there were from the first, and their 
numbers increased after the flight of Lafayette. Still, 
the proclamation of the French Republic, notwitstanding 
its bloody preface of Danton's September massacre, had 
aroused in America a great burst of popular feeling, 
which went on unchecked by the execution of the unfor- 
tunate Louis and the other violent acts of the Conven- 
tion. This sentiment was kindled into new fervor by 
the arrival at Charleston of citizen Genet, as ambas- 
sador from France. He brought with him news of the 
French declaration of war with England, and came, 
expecting the Republic at once to side with France in 
opposition to Great Britain. Five days before Genet's 
arrival in Charleston, the news had reached New York. 



212 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

Washington, then at Mt. Vernon, upon hearing the 
fact, hastened to Philadelphia and brought the question 
of neutrality before his cabinet. By the treaty of 
commerce, French privateers and prizes were entitled 
to shelter in the American ports, a shelter not to be 
extended to the enemies of France. " Were the United 
States bound to consider the treaties with France as 
applying to the present state of parties, or might they 
be renounced, or suspended? Should a proclamation 
issue to prevent interferences by citizens of the United 
States in the war? Should it contain a declaration of 
neutrality or what ? Should a minister from the French 
Eepublic be received ? If so, should the reception be 
absolute or qualified?" Upon an elaborate discussion 
of these questions it w r as unanimously agreed that a 
proclamation of neutrality should issue, and that the 
new French minister should be received. 

Hamilton, with whom Knox concurred, thought that 
the reception of Genet should be with an express reserve 
of the question as to the binding force of the treaties, 
now that the form of government was changed. Jeffer- 
son and Eandolph contended that the treaties were as 
binding in case of a Eepublic as in case of the King. 
Subsequent events evidenced the wisdom of Hamilton's 
suggestions. The French Eepublic abrogated the treaty 
of commerce and confiscated vessels and merchandize 
belonging to the United States. 

" Whether the state of the public feeling would have 
admitted, on the part of the American government, any 
position less ambiguous than the one actually taken, 
may well admit of doubt. Not only did enthusiasm 
run very high on behalf of the French Eepublic, but 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 213 

that feeling was seconded and inflamed by all the 
hatred of Great Britain, treasured up during the Revo- 
lutionary war. Genet, the new French ambassador, 
knew very well how to take advantage of both these 
sentiments. Placed, according to his own account, at 
the age of twelve years, in the bureau of Foreign 
Affairs, he had translated, under his father's direction, 
into the French language, the new American Constitu- 
tion and many political essays, ' thus contributing to 
penetrate the French with the spirit of Seventy-Six.' 
After being seven years head of the bureau, at Ver- 
seilles, under the direction of Yergennes, he had passed 
one year at London in a diplomatic capacity, two at 
Vienna, one at Berlin, and five in Russia, whence he 
bad been recently expelled bv the Empress Catharine. 
Having been lately employed in revolutionizing Geneva 
and annexing it to the French Republic, he had been 
selected by the Girondins, then in power, as a lit person 
to be sent to America; the object of his mission being, 
in fact, as appeared from his instructions, afterward 
published, to draw the United States, as far as possible 
into making common cause with France.'' 

His reception at Charleston, on the part of Governor 
Moultrie, and the citizens, had been most enthusiastic. 
The people sided with him, and by popular demonstra- 
tions encouraged him in a course which enabled him to 
set the government at defiance. He fitted out privateers, 
and manned them with American citizens, which put to 
sea and soon made numerous captures of homeward 
bound British vessels. He also assumed, under a decree 
of the Convention, the extraordinary power of author- 
izing the French consuls throughout the United States, 



214 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

to erect themselves into Courts of Admiralty, for trying 
and condemning such prizes as the French cruisers might 
bring into American ports. This at once brought our 
government into difficulties. The people sided with 
France, and opposed England. Genet's journey from 
Charleston to Philadelphia, was a triumphal procession. 
" Those same republicans who had severely reprobated 
any excessive marks of respect toward Washington, 
thought it almost impossible to do too much to honor the 
French Eepublic, in the person of her minister." An 
immense crowd met him at Gray's Ferry, and escorted 
him into Philadelphia. Addresses were presented him, 
by different societies. On May 18th he was presented 
to the President, and officially accredited. Washington 
received him coolly, but with becoming respect and form. 
In the evening a republican feast was given him, at 
which every demonstration was made in his favor. " From 
the moment, indeed, of Genet's arrival, the existence 
became evident, not only of a wide-spread and enthusi- 
astic sympathy for France, but of a faction more French 
than American, ready and anxious to go all lengths 
toward identifying the French and American republics." 
Soon after his formal introduction, he opened his diplo- 
matic correspondence, by a request for an immediate 
payment, by anticipation, of the remaining installments 
of the French debt, amounting to $2,300,000. He com- 
municated, at the same time, his authority, to propose a 
new treaty of commerce, " a true family compact," " on 
the liberal and fraternal basis of which, France wished 
to raise up the commercial and political system of 
two peoples, all of whose interests were confounded." To 
this proposal, the vague generalities of which seemed 



IN AMERICAN* HISTORY. 215 

rather alarming, it was answered, that nothing could be 
definitely concluded without the concurrence of the S n- 
ate, which was not to meet again till autumn, ffia 
request for money was met by a statement, that the Uni- 
ted States had no means of anticipating the payment of 
the French debt, except by borrowing money in Europe, 
which could not be done at present, on favorable terms. 
Nor did Hamilton hesitate to tell Genet, thai even were 
there no i ther obstacle, the anticipation of payment, at 
this time, might be regarded by Great Britain as a breach 
of neutrality. Greatly disappointed and offended at this 
reply. Genet expressed his intention to make the debt 
to France available for his purposes, bj 
ments of it in payment for provision* and other supplies. 
But to this the American government decidedly ob- 
jected, expressing the hope, that in a matter of mutual 
concern, nothing would be done but by mutual consent. 

Genet's attempts to evade the demands of our govern- 
ment regarding reprisals and privateering — his insolence 
to Washington and Hamilton — and his attempts to in- 
struct the President and Cabinet as to their duty — evi- 
denced that he relied on the support of the people. 
44 Their fraternal voire. " he wrote, "has resounded from 
every quarter around me, and their accents are not 
equivocal — they are pure as the hearts of those by whom 
they are expressed.'' 

Already an open struggle had commenced, the result 
of which for some time appeared quite doubtful, between 
the executive authority of the United States, on the one 
hand, and Genet and the French faction, on the other. 
Freneau's Gazette, the organ of Jefferson, assailed the 
proclamation of neutrality with great violence, as a piece 



216 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

of usurpation on the part of the Executive, issued without 
authority, and in derogation of the treaties with France, 
of the gratitude and sympathy due to that country, and 
of the rights of Congress, to whom only the decision 
belonged. Genet was exhorted to act with firmness, 
since the people were his friends, and since it was they, 
and not the President, who were sovereigns. The key- 
note, thus struck at Philadelphia, was soon responded to 
by Greenleaf's Patriotic Register, of New York, by the 
Chronicle, at Boston, and indeed by the opposition presses 
generally. 

The Cabinet, at this period of our history, was not 
composed, as now, of men of corresponding views. Wash- 
ington knew no party. He was an American. He ig- 
nored all cliques, and labored for the welfare of the nation. 
In his cabinet were Hamilton and Knox, Whigs, and 
Jefferson and Randolph, leading Democrats. This appel- 
lation was at this time introduced, by the formation of 
Democratic clubs, intended to have affiliated branches in 
all the counties of the States, the immediate object of 
which seems to have been, to control the State politics, 
and to infuse into them a larger portion of the new 
French enthusiasm. Genet modeled them after the 
famed Clubs of Paris. Jefferson opposed the policy of 
Washington, and extolled Freneau's Gazette " as having 
saved the Constitution, then fast galloping into a mon- 
archy." Genet, supported by the press, and countenanced 
by leading Democrats, pushed forward in his mad career. 
French cruisers were fitted out, and the United States 
authorities were treated with contempt. Washington 
and Hamilton stood almost alone in defense of the 
American policy. They resisted these encroachments. 



IX AMERICAN HISTORY. 217 

Washington addressed a letter to JeSerson, saying, 
<; Is the minister of the French republic to set the acts of 
this government at defiance with impunity, and then 
threaten the Executive with an appeal to the people?" 
It is impossible to watch the truckling course of Jeffer- 
son, Monroe, and the Democratic leaders, without being 
reminded of the fact, that the seedlings of the two parties 
were then planted. The one party, meted out equal 
justice to all, while it manfully and courageously pro- 
tected American interests; while the other obsequiously 
bowed to foreign influence, and the rights of our citizens 
were unhesitatingly surrendered to a foreign power, and 
made subservient to aid and encourage foreign influence. 
We find a counterpart to this picture in the career of 
Governor Kossuth in this country. Millard Fillmore 
and Henry Clay then took the stand of Washington and 
Hamilton. They resisted foreign dictation, and bade the 
proud wave of encroachment to stay its march. 

Democratic societies multiplied. Washington was 
the shining mark at which the envenomed arrows of 
hate were hurled by the opposition presses. Hamilton 
M took the field in defense of the proclamation of neu- 
trality, in a series of articles under the signature of 
4 Pacificus/ in which he maintained, with great ability, 
not only the policy of that measure, but the President's 
right, by its issue, to decide upon the position in which 
the nation stood. To these articles, a reply appeared, 
signed * Helvetius,' and written by Madison, at the 
special instigation and request of Jefferson, who still 
continued to play the somewhat inconsistent parts of 
secret head of the opposition, and leading member of 
the administration. 
19 



218 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

" At length, as it was impossible to unite the cabinet 
in opposition to Genet, the question of the restoration of 
prizes was submitted to the United States Court. Even 
there the policy of Washington was left unsupported. 
The indictment against Hatfield coming on for trial, in 
spite of a clear case on the evidence, and a distinct and 
positive charge as to the law, from the presiding judges, 
the prisoner was acquitted by the jury, to the vast 
delight of the French faction, and amid the acclamations 
of the assembled multitude. Genet's correspondence 
grew every day more insolent ; and as the necessity of 
some decided course was apparent, a new cabinet council 
was held to consider what should be done." 

After reading the correspondence of Genet, it was 
unanimously resolved to send a copy to France, with a 
request for his recall. Jefferson was for expressing 
this desire with great delicacy ; the rest were for per- 
emptory terms. It was proposed to furnish Genet with 
a statement, the same, in substance, with that sent to 
France, and to let him know that his recall had been 
demanded. This was opposed by Jefferson. It was 
next proposed to publish the correspondence, with a 
statement of all the proceedings, by way of that very 
appeal to the people which Genet had threatened. 

This truly Democratic course, so necessary at the 
present moment to bring out an expression of the people 
in support of the government, though warmly advocated 
by Hamilton, and though Washington was inclined to 
adopt it, was defeated by the opposition of Jefferson 
and Eandolph. In the course of this discussion, Wash- 
ington became much excited, and, as Jefferson records 
with evident exultation, " got into one of those passions 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 219 

when he can not command himself. 11 It; was only for a 
moment that Washington lost his self-command, and 
when we consider the kind of libels circulated against 
him, by the editor of a paper who was the translating 
clerk of Jefferson, while we can excuse Washington, 
contempt of Jefferson is natural. A circular was agreed 
upon, which at once put a stop to the outrages of Genet, 
and placed the government on a truly neutral ground. 
A reaction took place in the public mind, which enabled 
the people to see the tendency of tin's foreign influence. 
Though the opposition of Jefferson and Randolph for- 
bade the publication of the Genet correspondence, hints 
began to circulate as to the insolence of his conduct. 

At length the recall of Genet was made, and a change 
took place in the affairs of France. In 17!>4, the Gi- 
rondins, accused of conspiracy against the unity and 
indivisibility of the republic, had fallen from power. 
The control of French affairs had passed into the hands 
of the Jacobins, headed by Danton and Robespierre. 
These new administrators of the French government 
made no difficulty in recalling Genet ; but they took 
advantage of this occasion to ask, in their turn, the re- 
call of Morris, altogether too moderate in his political 
views, and quite too little of an enthusiast, to find favor 
even with the Girondins, and still less so with the yet 
more violent party on whom the administration of 
affairs had now devolved. The Reign of Terror now 
commenced. Genet did not choose to encounter the 
risk of a return, and having married a daughter of 
Governor Clinton, of New York, he remained henceforth 
a resident of that State, and after the expiration of his 
mission, he fell into total and deserved obscurity. 



220 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

Gouverneur Morris was esteemed highly by Wash- 
ington, and though he was recalled and succeeded by 
Monroe, the people and- the government cherished the 
memory of his services with the liveliest recollection. 
Monroe was a Democrat of the French school. His 
career in France was marked by folly and indiscretion, 
which finally made him unpopular, both at home and 
abroad. Space will not permit us to trace further the 
rise or progress of foreign influence in this direction. 
We have seen the formation of the two parties — the one 
American, and the other foreign in character. Wash- 
ington, Hamilton, Knox, Morris, Adams and Jay are 
names which adorn the first, while Jefferson, Monroe, 
Madison and Randolph — Genet, Gallatin, Freneau, and a 
host of other foreign names, appear at the head of the 
second. The Democratic party found the fountain of 
its influence in foreign sympathy and excitements. 
This characteristic is preserved to the present day. 
The foreigner landing upon our shores learns first to 
pronounce the word " Democrat." He votes for the 
candidate of the party, and goes in, at all hazards, for 
shaping the destinies of his adopted country. From the 
foundation of the republic to the present time, there 
have been those who stooped and bent before the for- 
eign influence, that by it they might reach exalted 
stations. 

The history of Washington is familiar to all. He 
stands up in the past, resembling a mighty temple, 
well-proportioned, neatly adorned, resting on an imper- 
ishable foundation, and spanning with its resplendent 
arch a vast brotherhood. Hamilton, the author of a 
national finance, regarded by all classes as an able 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 221 

statesman, possessed of poetical talents of the highest 
order, he is seen as the confidential adviser and support- 
er of an American policy, which laid the foundation of 
a prosperity without precedent or example in the histo- 
ry of the world. Jefferson, gifted by nature with a 
penetrating understanding, a lively fancy and sensibil- 
ities quick and warm, endowed w r ith powers of pleasing 
joined to a desire to please, an advocate of toleration 
and liberality in matters of religion, but in politics a 
complete bigot — joined to talents of the highest order 
a jealous disposition, a clamorous appeal for the Vox 
Populi, a fear of rivalry and a hatred of power, which 
made him the favorite of his party, the foe of Washing- 
ton, of Hamilton and of Adams. Assuming to himself 
the office at once of spy and censor on his colleagues, he 
adopted the practice of setting down in a note-book 
every heretical opinion carelessly dropped, every little 
piece of gossip reported to him by others, which might 
tend to convict his associates in the cabinet of political 
infidelity — anecdotes recorded, not as instances of the 
speculative errors into which the wisest and best may 
fall, but carefully laid up as evidences against political 
rivals of settled designs hostile to the liberties of their 
country. After the lapse of twenty-five years, he 
revised and arranged his Ana for publication, and left 
it for posterity. 

It w r as against Hamilton that the bitterness of a 
hatred at once personal and political was most keenly 
directed. The splendid reputation gained by the suc- 
cess of Hamilton's financial measures, fixing all eyes 
upon him as the leading spirit of the Government, his 
great popularity with the moneyed class; more than 



222 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

all, his weight and influence with Washington — excited 
in the mind of Jefferson a most violent antipathy. He 
began to see the measures advocated by himself, such as 
the assumption of the State debts, the bank, the fund- 
ing system, through a different light. All these meas- 
ures had been advocated by Hamilton and his support- 
ers, including some of the most eminent names in 
American history. These were denounced by Jefferson 
and his friends as a " corrupt squadron," actually bought 
up by the Secretary of the Treasury. 

It is known that Washington lost confidence in Jef- 
ferson and treated him for many years as his betrayal 
of confidence air 1 trust deserved. " The whole affair 
remained buried in obscurity till brought to light by 
the recent publication of Washington's writings ; and it 
was in ignorance that his double dealings, if not worse, 
had been fully exposed to Washington by one of his 
own warmest political partisans, that Jefferson, in his 
old age, wrote the famous letter to Mr. Van Buren, in 
which he attempted to make out that he had retained 
Washington's confidence to the last." 

M Apart from all other evidence, there are sufficient 
indications, even in Jefferson's writings, as prepared by 
himself for publication, that he rated Washington as 
low, hated him with as much energy, as he did all the 
other distinguished Federalists who stood in his way. 
But, dreading that great man's towering and indestruct- 
ible popularity, made more solid by time, as a rock on 
which his own crumbling reputation may be dashed to 
pieces should he venture to assail it, cringing as he 
always did to popular opinion, whether right or wrong, 
he has attempted the same course with posterity, which 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 223 

he so long successfully practiced with Washington him- 
self; he has assumed in his published writings the 
character of that great man's admirer, eulogist and 
friend; while many passages of these same writings 
covertly hold him up to contempt as a mere tool in the 
hands of abler men, who took advantage of his 
monarchical predilections and decaying faculties to make 
him the cover and instrument of their criminal pro- 
jects." ° 

Jefferson was not a true and steadfast friend. Ge- 
net bitterly reproached Jefferson with ungenerous con- 
duct, in his sarcastic intimation, " that it was not in his 
character to speak, as many people do, in one way and 
to act in another, to have an official lan^ua^e and a 
language confidential." Jefferson, though he professed 
to Genet the warmest friendship, in a letter to Madison 
described him as a hot-headed, passionate man, without 
judgment, likely, by his indecency, to excite the public 
indignation and render Jefferson's own position im- 
mensely difficult. 

Though he seemed anxious to protect all foreigners 
in their usurpations of our rights, yet in his private 
correspondence he opposed their appointment to foreign 
missions and deemed them unfit to hold office either as 
consuls or jurors. He entertained a peculiar distrust 
of the system of naturalization. He noticed the avidity 
with which the adopted citizens seized on the political 
privileges accorded to them under it, and, apprehensive 
of disastrous results, he did not hesitate to urge an 



°For the main facts contained in this chapter, the reader is re- 
ferred to Hildreth's able History of the United States, Vols. 1 and 2, 
Second Series. 



224 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

amendment to the naturalization laws, which should 
compel a foreigner to become familiar with our institu- 
tions prior to sharing in the direction of the same. " I 
hope," said Jefferson, " we may find some means in the 
future of shielding ourselves from foreign influence, 
political, commercial, or in whatever form attempted. 
I can scarcely withhold myself from joining in the wish 
of Silas Dean, * that there were an ocean of fire be- 
tween this and the Old World/ " 

We have seen the light in which Washington re- 
garded foreigners in the American service. Our Conti- 
nental Congress forbade any but native Americans to 
be employed in the foreign service of the country. In 
the orders given out by Washington, we find the express 
command — " You are not to enlist any person who is 
not an American born, unless such a person has a wife 
and family, and is a settled resident in this country. 
In his General Orders, at Cambridge Head-quarters, 
July 7, 1775, he says : " The general orders are, that 
for the future no man shall be appointed to those sta- 
tions, the outposts, who is not a native of this country." 
Again: "One hundred men are to be annexed to the 
guard of the commander-in-chief." " They must be 
Americans born" are the words with which the orders 
conclude, showing that native Americans were deemed 
worthy of trust by the Father of his country, if not by 
those who wear his mantle. 

The naturalization law, first adopted by the Ameri- 
can Congress, was passed in 1790, and required only 
two years' residence in the United States, in order to 
qualify an alien to take the oath of allegiance. In 
1795, the term of probationary residence was extended 



i.\ ynuoun history. 225 

to five years instead of two. By taking the oath of 
allegiance, the alien became at once forested with all 
the prerogatives, social and political, of a natural born 
citizen, with the single exception, that lie was not made 
eligible to the office of President or Vice President of 
the United States. 

In 1798 an amendment of the Naturalization Act was 
passed, extending the necessary previous residence to 
fourteen years, and requiring five years previous dec- 
laration of intention to In-come a citizen : Eastead rf the 
former and present requirements of fiye years in the one 
Bate, and three in the other. Alien WWlifS QDOld not 
become citizens at all. A register was also to be kept, 
of all aliens resident in the country, who were to report 
themselves, under certain penalties : and in case rf appli- 
cation to be naturalised, the certificate of an entry in 
this register was to be the only proof of residence admis- 
sible, whenever that residence commenced after date of 
the act. This act contained other restrictions, intended 
to guard against fraudulent evasions of its provisions ; 
but in 1 802 the whole act was repealed, and a new act, 
restoring the five years probation, was enacted in its stead. 
Two years after, viz: in 1804, this last act was in turn 
repealed, but was re-enacted in 1816, and continued in 
force until 1828, when, in order to facilitate the election 
of a partisan candidate for the Presidency, the law was 
modified by repealing the clauses which required the 
alien to obtain certificates of registration, and the decla- 
ration of intention. Thus every barrier has been thrown 
down, which formerly shielded the ballot box from cor- 
ruption. " There are," said Judge Dean, of the Supreme 



226 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

Court of New York, " probably no laws, of a public 
character, so imperfectly understood, and so badly admin- 
istered, as those for the naturalization of foreigners." As 
now administered, evasions are frequent, at which time 
the law is broken both in spirit and letter, and thousands 
of foreigners, on landing, have been marched away by 
political hucksters, to the " Naturalization Committee," 
at Tammany Hall, where their papers are obtained for 
them, and away they are led to the polls, and made to 
vote the ticket of a party of whose principles they are as 
ignorant as when they lived in Europe. 

A large proportion of these foreign-born citizens are 
paupers and criminals, who are sent here by the Courts 
of Europe. They profess the Eoman Catholic faith, and 
are under the subjugation of the priests. Their votes 
are bargained for by politicians in a manner that should 
cause a blush of shame to suffuse every freeman's cheek. 
They are ignorant of our laws, and of the principles of 
the government. They came to enjoy freedom from 
restraint, not an enlightened freedom, which deserves 
protection and support ; and while they are welcome to a 
home, and the blessings of our liberal institutions, it were 
worse than folly to surrender to an ignorant rabble, 
ruled by foreign despots, the priceless trust committed to 
our keeping by the honored dead. The boast has been 
made, by Archbishop Hughes, " that the propitious time 
will come at length — some accidental sudden collision, 
and a Presidential campaign at hsmd—ive will use then 
the very profligacy of our politicians for our purposes. 
They will want to buy the Irish vote, and we will tell 
them how they can buy it in a lump, from Maine to 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 227 

California — by declaring war on Great Britain, and 
wiping off, at the same time, the stains of concession and 
dishonor that our Websters, and men of this kind, have 
permitted to be heaped upon the American flag, by 
the violence of British agents. 7 ' 

"America," says Giustiniani, a prophetic writer, " is 
the land of the Jesuits. The; need but a majority of 
votes, which can easily be had by an importation of Ro- 
man Catholics from Ireland, Bavaria, and Austria. In 
ten years they will have a mighty influence — in twenty 
they will command." Said the Duke of Richmond, 
11 The government of the United States is weak, incon- 
sistent, and bad ! So long as it exists no prince in Eu- 
rope will be safe on his throne. 

" All the low population of Europe will be carried into 
America. It will be the receptacle for the bad and disaf- 
fected. They will create a surplus — a heterogeneous 
population — speaking a different language — of different 
religion and sentiments, these will carry with them their 
principles — will adhere to their former government, laws, 
manners, customs, and religion — speak of them among 
the natives, some of whom will join them, and they will 
become citizens — discord and civil war will follow — some 
popular man will take the lead to restore order — the 
European sovereigns will aid him — all the emigrants 
will join, and the government will be overthrown. n 

Such is the hope of the potentates of Europe. The 
times indicate that this threat is being carried into effect, 
with all possible dispatch. Let barriers be built up 
against this incoming wave. In the words of Patrick 
Henry — " Know the worst, and provide for it." Let the 



228 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

law of 1798 be re-enacted, with the several acts joined 
thereto. Let fourteen years, instead of five, become the 
necessary previous residence ; requiring the five years 
previous declaration of intention to become a citizen. 
Let it become a test, that every voter shall be able to 
read and write the English language. Then will the 
stepping-stones to infamy be removed, and the walls of 
freedom will rise higher, and still higher, around the 
altar of our beloved Fatherland. 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 229 



CHAPTER X. 

THE GOOD AND EVIL EFFECTS OF AMERI- 
CAN INSTITUTIONS. 

America the place of refuge for the oppressed — Equal rights — How 
abused — Dangers arising therefrom — The origin of the American 
and Foreign Christian Union — Norton, Baird, Dowling, Tvng and 
Hogue — Their work. 

In ancient times, the temples of worship consecrated 
to the Gods, furnished an asylum for the outlawed and 
persecuted. Whoever took refuge therein were safe. 
The great temple of our liberties became such a resort for 
the leading revolutionists of Europe, and for those who 
were weighed down by the galling chains of despotism. 

The great truth which was promulgated by the 
Declaration of Independence, established by the war 
of the Kevolution, and made the distinguishing charac- 
teristic of our nationality, was, that all legitimate power 
resides with and is derived from the people. 

••We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all 
men are created equal : that they are endowed by their 
Creator with certain inalienable rights, among them, 
life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." This clause 
contained in the immortal Declaration of Independence, 
was the entering wedge which penetrated despotic bars, 
and made a pathway for truth, such as the people of 
Europe had never before seen. This sublime truth, to 
us so self-evident, so simple, so obvious, was, before that 



230 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

time, measurably undeveloped in the history of the 
world. It was a total condemnation of all prevalent 
political theories — an absolute contradiction of the doc- 
trines of the Divine right of kings to reign, and of 
passive obedience— an utter denial of the infallibility 
of Prince or Pope — an emanation from and a constituent 
part of the age-long movement of the human mind — 
the principle of progress. It burst upon mankind like 
the roar of thunder in a cloudless sky ; and the hearts 
of nations leaped with sympathy. They felt that a 
hidden power had been revealed to man— a power des- 
tined to advance in its glorious career of conquest, until 
the day when it shall spring at a single bound to the 
throne of the world. 

It made every man feel his individuality — his sove- 
reignty. He found himself standing as a moral, 
political and social being, on a level with kings and 
princes. He was accountable to society for his actions, 
and to God for their results. It does not say that all 
men reach the same proud position, but that the door is 
thrown open to them. Industry, talent and integrity 
are the bondmaids of fortune and fame. 

The freedom of the press formed an era in progress. 
It evidenced to the world, that men were sure of their 
capabilities for self-government. Truth was proclaimed 
mightier than error. The pen usurped the place of the 
sword and the guillotine, and mind became the battle- 
ground where the strongest, clearest and bravest thinker 
was permitted to win and wear the prize. 

At the outset it was declared in the Constitution, 
Article VI, Sec. 3, that " The Senators and Kepresenta- 
tives and the members of the several State Legislatures, 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 231 

both of the United States and of tin* several Sta - 
shall be bound by oath or affirmation to support the 
Constitution, but no religious test shall ever be required 
as a qualification to any office or public trust under the 
United States." And the first amendment to the Con- 
stitution contains the following clause : " Congress shall 
make no law respecting an establishment of religion, 
or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." The Consti- 
tution of each State in the Union, with one exception, 
contains similar expressions, uttered in different forms, 
but all concurring in these two fundamental principles : 
first, that there shall be no connection between church 
and state ; and secondly, that religious liberty, the 
rights of conscience, and freedom to worship God accord- 
ing to the dictates of one's own conscience, are guaranteed 
to the citizens of the United States. In the words of 
Mr. Ullmann : 

" All these Constitutions aim to provide against 
spiritual domination, and to establish full personal 
religious freedom. In this, the nation agrees in all its 
utterances — written Constitutions and unwritten law. 
The general sentiment, and the settled determination — 
the profound convictions of the American people are, 
that there shall be, forever, under this government, -an 
entire and absolute separation between church and 
state ; and that perfect, full religious liberty shall 
always exist. The four corner-stones of the Temple of 
American Liberty are Social Freedom, Civil Freedom, 
Political Freedom and Eeligious Freedom. Let them 
stand firm, solid and deep in the earth. Let the 
mighty fabric rise, its majestic dome swelling in all its 
magnificent proportions, until it reaches the heavens." 



232 



THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 



This established the principle of religious freedom, 
though in several States the religious tests were kept 
up. It was impossible to overcome at once the deep- 
rooted prejudices existing against Komanists. In New 
Hampshire, New Jersey, North and South Carolina, 
and Georgia, the chief officers of State were required to 
be Protestants. In Massachusetts and Maryland, all 
office-holders were required to declare their belief in the 
Christian religion. In South Carolina, they must 
declare their belief in a future state of rewards and 
punishments. In North Carolina and Pennsylvania, it 
was necessary to acknowledge the inspiration of the 
Bible, and in Delaware, to believe in the doctrine of 
the Trinity. The Constitution of the State of Alabama, 
in its " Declaration of Eights," is, perhaps, clearer and 
more emphatic than any other, in its enunciation of the 
principles of civil and religious liberty. It says : 

"AKTICLE I. 

" Sec. 3. No person within this State, shall, upon 
any pretence, be deprived of the inestimable privilege 
of worshiping God in the manner most agreeable to his 
conscience. ° ° ° ° ° ° ° 

" Sec. 4. No human authority ought, in any case 
whatever, to control or interfere with the rights of 
conscience. 

" Sec. 7. There shall be no establishment of religion 
by law ; no preference shall ever be given, by law, to 
any religious sect, society, denomination, or mode of 
worship ; and no religious test shall ever be required 
as qualification to any office or public trust under this 
State." 



IX AMERICAN HISTORY. 233 

When Louisiana was purchased, it was found that 
her whole system of government was intolerant. It 
partook of the characteristics of bigoted Spain, backed 
up and sustained by French rule. The Spanish regula- 
tions for the allotment of lands were of the most in tole- 
rant nature; going to show that the Catholic church, 
when possessed of absolute power, is ever the same. 
We give these laws, as extracted from the Laws of the 
United States, vol. 1, p. 542: 

*• Sec. 6. The privilege of enjoying liberty of con- 
science is not to extend beyond the first generation. 
The children of tho$e who <nj<>y it must positively be 
Cathodes. Those who will not confess to this are not to 
be admitted, but are to be sent back out of the province 
immediately, even though they possess much property. 

" Sec. 7. In the Illinois, none shall he admitted but 
Catholics, of the classes of farmers and artisans. The 
provisions of the preceding article shall be explained to 
the emigrants already established in the province, who 
are not Catholics, and shall be observed by them ; their 
not having done it until this time being an omission, and 
contrary to the orders of His Majesty, which required it 
from the beginning. 

" Sec. 8. The Commandants will take particular care 
that no Protestant preacher, or one of any sect, other than 
Catholic, shall intrude himself into the province. The 
least neglect in this respect will be a subject of repre- 
hension." 

As it is the boast of the Papacy, that it is " semper id 
eadem" always the same, it is not strange, that with such 
precedents before the eyes, as the decapitation of kings, 



20 



234 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

the slaughter of innocent Protestants, and the burning 
of Bibles, our fathers should move cautiously in wel- 
coming the Catholic to the same rights and privileges 
which the sons of the Revolution enjoyed. 

At length the views and feelings of Americans were 
softened. The French alliance had a powerful influence 
in diminishing the deep-seated prejudices against Roman 
Catholicism ; and Rhode Island, that State which took the 
initiative in religious, now led off in political freedom, 
and set an example of liberality by repealing the act by 
which Catholics were prohibited from becoming voters. 
Other States followed in her wake. From this time 
Catholicism withdrew, in the United States, from the 
theater of politics, and confined her operations to secretly 
enlarging the foundations of, her power. The world 
knew little of her plans, and learned to regard with a 
feeling of commiseration her hooded nuns and long robed 
priests. The priests were modest and unassuming. 
Politicians found no difficulty in securing their influence, 
and when the tide of emigration began to flow in upon 
us, it came in the shape of persecuted exiles, and fam- 
ishing men. They left the stormy shores of Europe, 
seeking shelter and protection under our flag. The 
American heart opened wide its temple doors, and bade 
them welcome. Noiselessly, for many years, the stream 
of emigration flowed unceasingly westward. Our valleys 
began to be dotted by the emigrant's cabin, and the 
sound of the woodman's ax echoed among our mountains. 
At this time, the Atlantic border began to be thickly 
settled. Steam had made the rivers navigable, and the 
iron horse began his march toward the Western sun. A 



IV AMERICAN HISTORY. 235 

■•■in of internal improvements was begun — the price 
of labor rose — the demand for the starving poor of Eu- 
rope became greater and greater. 

11 For many years after the adoption of the Federal 
Constitution the greater part of the immigrants to 
the United States were Frenchmen, whom political 
troubles had driven from home — or else Englishmen, 
Scotchmen, and Irishmen, who had espoused ultra Kepub- 
liean opinions, and who, in flying from the sewiv meas- 
ures of repression adopted against them at hone, brought 
to America a furious hatred of the government of Great 
Britain, and warm admiration for Republican France. 
There wore some among these, however enthusiastic they 
■light bo, and, on some points, mistaken in their politics, 
of unblemished character, and noble aims. But a large 
number were desperate and violent men, whose chief idea 
of freedom seemed to be the unrestrained indulgence of 
their own fierce passions. Many were persons of consid- 
erable literary qualifications, and having been journalists 
and pamphleteers at home, they found employment in 
that capacity, and a very large proportion of the journals 
of the Southern, or Middle States, were edited by persons 
of this description.' ' 

Most of them were Catholics by birth. They under- 
stood the influence of priestcraft at home, and were ready 
to avail themselves of its assistance in furthering party 
interests. Though nominally free, one question has 
always laid an embargo on the freedom of the press, and 
it may be said, that in regard to this, " with golden 
muzzles all their mouths were bound.'' Men occupying 

Hildreth, yol. ii.. 2d series, page 214. 



236 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

the highest stations were as profoundly silent on the 
subject of Komanism as though a Jesuit's foot had never 
touched our shores. Such men were to be found in the 
pulpit and at the bar alike. Merchants and editors — ■ 
men of all classes dependant upon the masses for patron- 
age and support, denied themselves the liberty of the 
press and of speech — while with open mouths they pro- 
claimed free toleration of religious sentiments. Said a 
writer, in 1845, " It is a serious fact, and one which 
should claim the attention of every Christian and patriot, 
that in a community where the Eoman Catholics are 
numerous, it is next to impossible to get the Protestants 
to raise a finger to counteract the influences of Popery. 
The interests of the community are so blended together, 
and in such multiplied ways, as to make it a matter of 
the greatest delicacy to have the subject agitated, even 
in the most kind and Christian spirit/' 

What a commentary is contained in the above state- 
ment upon the course pursued by the descendants of the 
Puritans. The Catholic never forgets his religion. He 
may be drunk, but he will eat no meat on Friday. He 
maintains his allegiance to the church, regardless of 
frowns or favors. He will not read the Bible, unless a 
dispensation be given him by the priest. He is the 
servant of the Pope, and is ready at any moment to heed 
his voice. But Protestants, for place, power, and wealth, 
turned their back upon their country, and trampled the 
interests of their religion into the dust. Catholics and 
Protestants intermarried freely. The children grew up 
Komanists, in accordance with the initiatory rites admin- 
istered in infancy. In glancing at the tabular statements 
of the respective churches in 1785 and 1850, we find 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 237 

that Protestants were ruled by i miserable moiety, com- 
posed, to a great extent, of the ignorant and oppre- 
sons of Europe, who were ruled by priests, and whose 
entire influence was derived from the total abnegation 
of the rights of self-government. The following state- 
ment, made by Eev. Stuart Robinson, of Baltimore, has 
a direct bearing upon the subject. 

He makes the following tabular comparison : 

1785 1850 

ROMAN CATHOLIC. 

Number of Priests, - - 24 1,800 

Population, - - - - 30,000 l\ 200,000 

METHODIST. 
Number of Ministers, - 1 000 

Population, - - - - 1,000 6,000,000 

BAPTIST. 

Number of Ministers, - 450 10,000 

Population, - - - - 40,000 5,000,000 

PRESBYTERIAN. 

Number of Ministers, - 177 4,000 

Population, - - - - 30,000 2.000,000 

"It must be borne in mind/' remarks Mr. Pw., "in 
this comparison, that several most important abatements 
are to be made from this view of the Roman Catholic 
statistics — first : that during this period the filibuster- 
ing propensities of the American people had bought up, 
or fought into, the original territory, over two millions 
of square miles, more than twice the original area of 
the country, and all that, save Oregon, perhaps, Roman 
Catholic territory. 

" What aid came from that quarter in the way of 
helping to make up the present two and a quarter 



238 THK ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

millions of Roman Catholic population may be inferred 
from the fact that in the summary of the Roman Catholic 
population, given in the almanac of Messrs. Lucas, from 
the reports of the bishops of each diocese, out of the 
1,996,000 there reported, near 400,000, about one-fifth 
of the whole, are reported from this annexed Roman 
Catholic territory. Thus : ' New Orleans, 175,000 ; Nat- 
chitoches, 30,000; Santa Fe, 68,000; San Francisco, 
70,000 ; Monterey, 28,000 ;' etc. From Texas no report. 
With some half-million of the original stock, or their off- 
spring, thus converted into American Catholics, by an act 
of government, not of the church ; and the eleven hundred 
thousand acknowledged on all hands to be imported, we 
may be able to account for the remaining eight hundred 
thousand of Roman Catholic population, much more 
easily than for the six million Methodists, even without 
the help of native converts from Protestantism. But 
after an examination of these statistics in the almanac 
of the Messrs. Lucas, I feel constrained to differ mate- 
rially from Archbishop Hughes' conjecture of only 
eleven hundred thousand foreign Catholic population, 
of the two and a quarter millions, against twelve hun- 
dred and odd thousand American born, at least inde- 
pendent of the half million of the annexed and their 
descendants. In the first place, to read aloud a page 
of alphabetical roll of the priesthood in the almanac 
referred to, and then a page of a Methodist Conference 
roll, or a Presbyterian General Assembly roll, will of 
itself throw suspicion upon this theory. The large pro- 
portion of the sounds of the names utterly impracticable 
to an English tongue, (I should judge about thirty-five 
out of fifty on a page,) indicates a far greater proportion 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 239 

of foreign element in the church. Think of the roll 
of the ministry of a native American church, that can 
boast the romantic prefix of l De' twenty-five times 
repeated^ in a roll of eighteen hundred, and the jolly 
Irish ; 0\ some eighty-four, (or four-score.) and yet but 
two John Smiths, three Millers, two Wilsons, and not a 
Robinson ! To tiie great mass of the people, this fact 
alone would be very significant." 

These facts arrested the attention of American Pro- 
testants, and caused a counter-movement, organized in 
1841, whose business it became to watch the move- 
ments of Popery, and scatter facts among the people, 
which had a bearing upon the subject. In 1840. the 
American and Foreign Christian Union was formed by 
the union of the American Protestant Society and the 
Foreign Evangelical Society. Rev. H. Norton, author 
of " Signs of Danger and Promise, " and " Startling 
Facts for American Protestants," was continued in the 
office of Corresponding Secretary, a position he held 
with great ability in the American Protestant Society 
since 1843. He died in 1850, and was succeeded by 
the present incumbent, Rev. E. R. Fairchild, D. D., 
under whose successful management the Society has 
become the center of enlarged and extending influence. 

Rev. Robert Baird, D. D., Corresponding Secretary 
of the Union, is a man remarkable for his energy and 
devotion to the welfare of the papal population, both of 
the Old and New World. 

Born in 1778, and commencing life with no assistant 
but an indomitable will and an unyielding perseverance 
of purpose, through the generous aid of friends, he 
entered upon a collegiate course in Jefferson College, 



240 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

where he won honors and position, and in time gradua- 
ting, both from college and the Princeton Theological 
Seminary, with credit, he at once entered upon the work 
of instruction, and spent five years jn the capacity of a 
teacher. As an agent for the American Bible Society, 
the Missionary Society of New Jersey, and last for the 
American Sunday School Union, he amassed a store of 
facts, which directed his attention to the condition of 
the Eoman Catholic church. Eight years more were 
consumed in foreign travel, where he was made acquainted 
with the chief dignitaries of the Continent, and with 
the system of government which served to stultify the 
reason and corrupt the energies of the priest-ridden 
throngs which sought a home in America. In 1843, 
he accepted the office of Corresponding Secretary of the 
Foreign Evangelical Alliance, which office he now retains 
in the American and Foreign Christian Union. He 
has visited Europe five times or more, with eminent 
success. Through his influence, the Protestants of the 
Old World have been made to sympathize with the 
workers here — the attention of Christendom has been 
directed to the aggressions of Eome — the Gospel has 
been preached to thousands of the deluded votaries of 
Romanism, thronging our shores, whose souls have been 
saved by the blood of Christ — the imprisoned in Europe 
have found strong, earnest, sympathizing friends in 
America, through whose endeavors their prison-doors 
have been unlocked, and by whose aid the exiles of 
persecuted nations have gained homes in our Western 
valley. 

Through his influence, the persecuted exiles of Ma- 
deira were welcomed to our shores, and the record of 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 241 

their martyr sufferings were spread before the world's 
eye, on the printed page. 

There is a galaxy of noble men, whose names will 
ever shine as stars in the firmament of the religious 
world, because of their noble daring in setting up the 
standards of the cross, in places where cowards would 
not dare to travel. Dowling. Kirwan, Tyng, Hogue, 
and others, in the hour of peril, rushed to the breach. 
By them, the confessional has been laid bare. Facts 
have been scattered broadcast over the land, exposing 
the nefarious designs of the papacy. The Inquisition 
has been explored, and the gown of the priest is shown 
to cover a traitor's heart. By them, the seedling has 
been planted, which has grown up into the great Native 
American tree, beneath whose wide-spreading boughs 
the sons of freedom gather, and sing in glowing strains 
the songs of liberty. 

21 



242 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 



CHAPTER XL 

THE CATHOLIC SCHOOL QUESTION — ITS 
PAST AND PRESENT CONDITION. 

It will suffice for our present purpose to notice the 
characteristics that distinguish this nation, enabling it 
to take the precedence, in rank and influence, over 
those occupying territory to the north and south of us. 

Did time and space permit, it would be pleasant to 
go back to the disembarkation of the Pilgrims, who, in 
the depths of winter, with a scowling sky above, and a 
frozen earth in front, sought, on this forest continent, 
freedom to worship God. This was the seedling plant- 
ed by an Almighty Hand, from which has sprung the 
arch that now spans the temple of our liberties. It 
throned us as a city upon a hill, and gave us a power 
which has been disturbing for more than a half a cen- 
tury the foundations of empire in the Old World. 

Our Pilgrim Fathers, as they fled from persecution, 
brought with them an unacknowledged love for that 
venerable land they had abandoned forever. They 
pushed forward into a trackless wilderness, opening up 
the path of empire before them and leaving behind 
them the altars of their faith. Upon these altars lights 
were kindled, which, at first, shone glimmeringly as 
stars, but which have grown into a constellation of suns 
that, standing in the Western sky, causes the thrones 
of Europe to cast the shadow of their evening. 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 243 

Gold and silver threw a charm about the South, 
while the furs of the North made commerce desirable, 
and formed a loadstone to emigration. The Canadas 
were colonized by the French — South America by the 
Diards. Gaspard de Coligny to make Canada 

an asylum for the oppressed Huguenots. His Bcheme 
failed. In Canada. Protestants were denied a home. 
South America was settled by a government more in- 
tolerant than the French. Gobi was the object of their 
worship. Both North and South America were at first 
colonized by governments. A length Q 
here. These brought with them Bibles, ministers and 
schoolmasters. Churches and school-h< re built 

side by side, the one leaning upon and being BQppCN 
by the other. Principles denied at Quebec were -rant- 
ed at Boston, and the persecuted refugees of Kurope 
were permitted the complete enjoyment of every right 
municipal and divine. Every enterprise of the Pilgrims 
began from God. Prior to their departure from Eng- 
land, a solemn fast was held. Anticipating their high 
destiny and the sublime doctrines of liberty, that would 
grow out of the principles on which their religious tenets 
were established, Robinson gave them a farewell, 
breathing a freedom of opinion and an independence of 
authority such as then were hardly known in the world. 
Said he: "I charge you before God and his blessed 
angels, that you follow me no further thau you have 
seen me follow Christ. The Lord has more truth yet 
to break forth out of His Holy Word. I cannot suffi- 
ciently bewail the condition of the reformed churches, 
who are come to a period in religion, and will go no 
further than the instruments of their reformation. 



244 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

Luther and Calvin were great and shining lights in 
their times, yet they penetrated not into the whole 
council of God. I heseech you remember it — 'tis an 
article of your church covenant, that you be ready to 
receive whatever truth shall be made known to you 
from the written Word of God." Such was the tutelage 
of the settlers of New England. They had flouted 
custom, laughed at tradition, and, receiving their com- 
mission from God, they fled from England to Amster- 
dam. Still their minds were fettered by restrictions 
and usages. They desired a wider scope for thought 
and action. They threw off the fetters that bound 
them to Luther and Calvin, and followed the teachings 
of the written Word of God. They had been persecuted 
by Catholics and Episcopalians alike. A long expe- 
rience had emancipated them from bigotry, and "they 
were never betrayed into the excesses of persecution, 
though they sometimes permitted a disproportion be- 
tween the punishment and the crime." To enjoy 
religious freedom they came to America and established 
a colony in New England. They desired that the 
additions to their settlement should be from those of 
similar faith. The principles of the New Testament 
formed their standard of action. If they erred, all will 
concede to them honesty of purpose. " Onward" was their 
motto, and fearlessly they pressed forward into the un- 
explored realms of truth. 

The second prominent feature in their history was 
their system of Free Schools. " To the end, that 
learning may not be buried in the graves of our fore- 
fathers, it was ordered in all the Puritan colonies that 
every township, after the Lord had increased them to 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 245 

the number of fifty householders, shall appoint one to 
teach all children to write and read, and when any 
town shall increase to the number of one hundred fam- 
ilies, they shall set up a grammar school, the masters 
thereof being able to instruct youth so far that they may 
be fitted for the university. " In 1638, Harvard Col- 
lege was founded. In 1639, the press began its work. 
When New England was poor and weak, learning 
flourished in her groves and literature was scattered 
through her homes. Every child received as its birth- 
right a pledge of the public care for its morals and its 
mind. Their schools were sustained by contributions 
which seem trivial and small. Boston gave the rent of 
a ferry, some gave twelve pence, others a peck of corn, 
and others still some article of silver, all of which went 
to foster the growth of learning. The provisions made 
in New England for the education of the children, be- 
came general in the Northern States, and in many of 
the Southern States. Colleges were founded whose 
basis of support was lands granted by Congress for 
their sustenance. State Superintendents are appointed, 
town libraries established. Thus there is opened for 
the poor and rich, the high-born and humble, an avenue 
to knowledge, in which all may become competitors for 
the prize hanging out alike to all. 

For the free instruction of the youth of the Eepublic 
there are more than 60,000 schools, which are support- 
ed at an annual expense of over six million dollars. 
These schools have given to the age her Websters, 
Clays and Calhouns. In them Sumner, Seward and 
Hale were scholars, and Stephen A. Douglas once boast- 
ed the cognomen of pedagogue. When the scepter of 



246 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

French rule, in Canada, passed into the hands of the 
English, there was not a printing-press nor a school- 
house in the province. The people were ruled by- 
priests, and the scepter of oppression was broken by 
Wolfe on the hights of Abraham. 

The altars of the Protestant faith were rebuilt, 
printing-presses were established, and educational in- 
terests were advanced. The Bible was no longer for- 
bidden the people. A new spirit pervaded the institu- 
tions of the land and Canada started out in a career of 
progress. We have seen the origin of our educational 
system. The rapid strides made by science and truth 
have exceeded the expectations of the most sanguine. 
Our educational interests, linked as they are to the 
Bible, underlie every other. They have built this Ee- 
public and made it strong and mighty. They have 
furnished us our Websters, Clays and Calhouns. They 
have filled our Senate Chambers and Presidential Chair 
with men whose names shed a halo of glory upon our 
history. They have made our country the light of the 
world, and our influence, by means of it, has found its 
way to all. It could be shown that we are indebted to 
the intelligence and freedom of our people for our 
national prosperity, and that whatever tends to destroy 
this freedom, or weaken this intelligence, should be 
checked and overcome. 

It becomes necessary to show that this school system 
is the object of the bitterest hate, and most determined 
opposition, and that if we would preserve intact the privi- 
leges and blessings it confers upon the State, it must 
receive the protection and support of all lovers of a 
general diffusion of knowledge. 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 247 

In 1822 the Bethel Baptist church, of the city of New 
York, made application for a portion of the public funds, 
to be devoted to the maintenance of certain schools under 
its supervision. The request was granted. After the 
lapse of three years it was reconsidered, on the ground 
that they were not strictly common schools. This decis- 
ion of 1825 was regarded as settling the principles on 
which the school-fund was thereafter to be distributed. 

On this ground the application of the Catholics in 
1831 and '2 for an orphan asylum, was strenuouly re- 
sisted by the Trustees of the Public Schools. But despite 
the opposition, and in the face of their own admission of 
the justice of the principles out of which it arose, the 
Corporation of New York granted the Catholic petition, 
"out of pure sympathy," as they said, " for so interest- 
ing a charity. n 

In a short time after this transaction, the Methodists 
applied for money to aid certain orphan schools, which 
they were maintaining ; but after much discussion the 
Aldermen refused compliance, by an almost unanimous 
vote. Thus we see the Catholics were made the excep- 
tion to the general rule. In 1840 the Catholics, led by 
Archbishop Hughes, again took the field. They did not 
come seeking charities, but by one fell stroke to sweep 
our school system from the board. They did not com- 
plain of oppression, nor of being deprived of any rights 
enjoyed by others, but demanded at the outset, what 
they claim as theirs, of the school-fund. They found 
fault with certain reading-books, in general, with the 
free use of the Bible, in particular. 

As a compromise the Bible was banished from the 
leading public schools of the city. Everything that could 



248 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

be done to place all upon a common level was performed. 
But this, instead of satisfying the exacting spirits who 
had demanded the change, was made, by a most glaring 
inconsistency, the occasion of a new and more plausible 
attack. The schools were denounced as " Anti-christian, 
heathen, and godless." From pulpit and platform, by 
speech and press, denunciations were hurled upon them. 
The system underwent still further changes, in text-books, 
exercises, and discipline. Thus they met, in the most 
thorough manner, the cases presented by the Romanists ; 
but they were still unsatisfied. Failing in their attempts 
before the Common Council, they memorialized the Legis- 
lature. This brought the question before the public. 

It has been often asserted, by Catholics and Protest- 
ants, that Wm. H. Seward, when Governor of New York, 
urged a compliance with their demands, and became a 
supporter of the measure. It is not difficult to evidence 
that this is a mistake worthy of correction. That in his 
message of 1840 he recommended " that foreigners, who 
come to settle among us, should be permitted to have 
their children educated by teachers who speak their own 
language, and profess a similar faith, and that at the 
same time they should be permitted to enjoy their pro- 
portion of the bounty of the State, provided for the 
encouragement of popular education," is true. But this 
Catholics were always allowed to do, when they had a 
majority in a district, and could control the casting vote 
in the election of Trustees. In 1841 he again refers to the 
subject in in his message, and says, " Of 1,058 children, 
in the Alms-house of the city of New York, one-sixth 
part is of American parentage, one-sixth was born abroad 
and the remainder were the children of foreigners." 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 249 

There then is the ground of Gov. Seward's complaint, 
and the evil which he wishes to remove. He desires 
to educate the masses, to gather the children of 
foreigners into the public schools. Not caring so much 
by whom taught, as to provide a remedy for the truant 
and idle manner in which the children were brought up. 
"Of two hundred and fifty children in the House of 
Eefuge, more than one-half were either born abroad, or 
of foreign parents. Although the excellent public 
schools in the city of New York, are open to all, and 
have long afforded gratuitous instruction to all who seek 
it, nevertheless the evil exists there in the greatest 
magnitude.' 1 For this reason he proposed, that teachers 
might be secured, who, from their relations to the igno- 
rant masses, would secure their confidence, and win their 
regard. He continues : " I have not recommended, nor 
do I seek the education of any class in foreign languages, 
or in particular creeds or faiths ; but fully believing with 
the author of the Declaration of Independence, that even 
error may safely be tolerated where reason is left free to 
combat it, and therefore indulging no apprehensions from 
the influence of any language or creed, among an enlight- 
ened people, I desire the education of the entire rising 
generation in all the elements of knowledge we possess, 
and in that tongue which is the universal language of 
our countrymen. To me the most interesting of all our 
republican institutions is the public schools." 

Such was the position of Gov. Seward. Many opposed 
him, and perhaps as many more sided with him. In 
1842 he renews his recommendation in favor of the dis- 
tribution of the common school money, so as to allow 
foreigners and Catholics to participate in the bounty of 



250 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

the State, without a violation of what they deem to be 
their religious duties to their children. As this is the 
summary of all that he had previously stated, we will 
submit the entire clause. 

" This proposition to gather the young from the 
streets and wharves into the nurseries, which the State, 
solicitous for her security against ignorance, has pre- 
pared for them, has sometimes been treated as a device 
to appropriate the school-fund to the endowment of 
seminaries for teaching languages and faiths, thus to 
perpetuate the prejudices it seeks to remove; some- 
times as a scheme for dividing that precious fund among 
a hundred jarring sects, and thus increasing the reli- 
gious animosities it strives to heal ; sometimes as a plan 
to subvert the prevailing religion, and introduce one 
repugnant to the consciences of our fellow-citizens ; 
while, in truth, it simply proposes, by enlightening 
equally the minds of all, to enable them to detect error 
wherever it may exist, and to reduce uncongenial masses 
into one intelligent, virtuous, harmonious and happy 
people. Being now relieved from all such misconcep- 
tions, it presents the questions, whether it is easier and 
more humane to educate the offspring of the poor, than 
to leave them to grow up in ignorance and vice ; 
whether juvenile vice is more easily eradicated by the 
Court of Sessions, than by the common schools ; whether 
parents have a right to be heard concerning the instruc- 
tion and instructors of their children, and tax-payers, in 
relation to the expenditure of the public funds ; whether, 
in a republican government, it is necessary to interpose 
an independent corporation between the people and the 
school-master; and whether it is wise and just to disen- 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 251 

franchise an entire community of all control over educa- 
tion, rather than suffer a part to be represented in 
proportion to its numbers and contributions." M Since 
such considerations are now involved, what has hitherto 
been discussed as a question of benevolence and universal 
education, has become one of equal civil rights, religious 
tolerance, and liberty of conscience." 

It will be seen that the avowed object of Gov. Seward 
was " the education of the entire rising generation in 
all the knowledge we possess, and in that tongue which 
is the universal medium of thought for our countrymen. " 
In the same message, he gives it as his opinion that it 
matters not by whom nor how this end n realised, for 
even error may safely be tolerated where reason is left. 
If this is the opinion of Mr. Seward, then we can not see 
any good reason why he should recommend the distri- 
bution of the public money among the different sects by 
which the religious community is formed. For if there 
is no danger to be apprehended from the promulgation 
of error, when the reason is free to combat it, certainly 
there is no good reason why the Catholics should com- 
plain of and find fault with our school system. 

No one claims that the reason is fettered, in our 
public schools, but, on the contrary, the Catholics con- 
tend that, the reason left free and the judgment of 
the children not being matured, they are in danger of 
becoming luke-warm in their attachment to the Catholic 
faith, consequently their eternal interests are threatened 
with shipwreck and disaster. But Mr. Seward occupies 
entirely different ground from that on which the Cath- 
olics rest their hope. The Catholics contend that there 
is danger — that errors corrupt the faith of their children — 



252 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

that hosts of them, when they become educated, forsake 
the church of their fathers, and become aliens and 
heretics. With the Catholic, the reason, mind and 
heart must be chained to the empty hulk of the idea 
of a great church, which is the receptacle of all knowl- 
edge and light. A man out of it is not safe. His 
mind must wear the shackles of a superstitious fear, 
and be bound to receive the dogmas of popery as truth, 
however much they may disagree with history and 
science. The Catholic of to-day is not wiser than those 
of Galileo's time ; nor is he less bigoted or slavish. Mr. 
Seward contends that the shackles should be thrown off, 
and that mind, fetterless and free, should be permitted 
to wander through the great temple of thought, that 
stands with open doors for all. Mr. Seward, then, 
though claimed to be the champion of the measure, 
when judged by the Catholic standard, fails to establish 
this premise, and therefore the conclusion reached is not 
logical and is valueless. Again: he proposed this mea- 
sure that a greater proportion of the children might 
receive a liberal education ; that not only those in the 
common schools, but those out of them, might all alike 
receive the blessings prepared for each and all who 
would accept of the proffered boon. He finds no fault 
with the schools now taught, indeed, he calls them 
excellent, and because of the large number of children 
whose parents were foreigners, who were now crowding 
our prisons and alms-houses, he proposes that Catholic 
teachers should be provided, in whom the parents would 
have confidence. 

Mr. Seward differs, in every essential point, with his 
Catholic neighbors. The Catholics have no commisera- 



IB AMERICAN HISTORY. 253 

tion for those in ignorance — about those thev are not 
troubled, their cause of alarm and ground of opposition 
comes from entirely a different source, viz: because of 
a fear of losing their influence over the unshackled 
minds acquiring an education in the common schools. 

For this reason, the Catholics, encouraged by their 
former success, in secret conclave at Baltimore, in the 
Spring of 1852, resolved to make a united attack upon 
the system of free schools, from Maine to Alabama — 
from ocean to ocean. During the ensuing winter, the 
attack was made. In California, alone, they have been 
successful. The Catholics boast that the battle com- 
menced shall continue until victory shall perch upon 
their standards, and the whole fabric of free schools 
shall be leveled with the ground. 

It becomes us, now, to look this question fairly in the 
face, for it is fast becoming the giant which, laying 
hold of the pillars of republican institutions, is deter- 
mined to tear down the Temple of Freedom, if, by so 
doing, it be engulfed in a common ruin. Though the 
opposition has been publicly laid aside, yet the determi- 
nation to fetter their progress is none the less earnest 
than formerly. The admonition of the great Lafayette, 
himself a Catholic, is worthy of a place in the memory 
of every American : u If ever the liberty of this repub- 
lic is destroyed, it will be by Romish priests." This 
demands the serious consideration of all who love their 
country. Leading characters in the Romish church are 
not backward to assert, that this impudent onset for the 
purpose of destroying our public school system, shall be 
a perpetual war till they triumph. " We are only be- 
ginning to agitate these questions," says Archbishop 



254 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

Hughes. And a New York paper adds : u There is 
every reason to suppose that the effort to ruin the 
public school system, so long the glory of our State, 
will be strenuously renewed next winter." " This 
subject,' 7 says the (Catholic) " Freeman's Journal/' 
" contains in it the whole question of the progress and 
triumphs of the Catholic church in the next generation 
in this country. Catholics, let us all act together." 
We are told by the Eomanists, that this question will 
be discussed through all its moods and tenses, and that 
nothing in the way of argument, complete in all its 
parts, appealing to reason and sound judgment, has as 
yet been advanced by the supporters of the present 
school system. 

The course pursued by the Catholics was indicated 
by the Freemen's Journal, after the defeat of their 
attempts to overthrow a system established by the wise 
framers of the Eepublic. Its language is clear and 
explicit. It says : " What we Catholics must do, and 
must do now, is, first, to get our children out of this 
devouring fire. At any cost, at any sacrifice, we must 
deliver the children, over whom we have control, from 
these pits of destruction, which lie invitingly in their 
way, in the name of Public or Private Schools. We 
must, wherever there are enough Catholics together to 
render it possible, organize Catholic schools. Where 
this is impossible, let parents withdraw their children 
from these places, where they are certain to learn evil, 
and probably very little but evil, and if they can not have 
them taught elsewhere, let them be sent to honest labor, 
or kept from the ways of the destroyer, under the parents' 
eyes. This withdrawal of Catholic children, everywhere, 



IN AMERICAN FirSTORY. 255 

from the Godless schools, should be their first step. 
It is lamentable that it has not long aero boon taken." 

The schools were denounced as unsafe, '* the cup 
presented them, as defiled/ 1 and that the Bible read 
in them was of a version they reject. They contended 
against sending their children to a school where reli- 
gious training was practiced, while, by a characteristic 
inconsistency, they find fault with schools in which the 
Bible is read, as dangerous in the extreme, rendering 
their children heretics here and miserable hereafter. 
They contend that millions in this republic are now 
being insulted, because they are compelled to pay taxes 
for the support of schools in which they have not confi- 
dence, and to which they can not send their children, 
but at the abandonment of conscientious scruples. For 
these, and other similar reasons, they propose to with- 
draw their support from schools now in existence, not 
with a view of advocating the claims of a more demo- 
cratic system, but to tear down the one so productive of 
good, that upon its ruins one may be reared, in which 
the youth of our land may learn the dogmas of Popery 
and become good Catholics. As evidence that we have 
not overdrawn the picture, let us ipiote again. After 
having taken their children out of the M pit of destruc- 
tion," and having rescued them from the " galling fire 
of common schools/ f we must, say they, set to work 
patiently, calmly, resolutely, perseveringly, to break off 
from our necks the yoke of State despotism in this and 
the other States. Said Thomas D'Arcy McGee, an 
Irish Catholic of some distinction, of Buffalo, in Xew 
York, on Monday evening, April 25, 1S53: 

" There were many theories of education in the world ; 



256 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

there was the Pagan and the Christian theory, and 
there was the secular or worldly theory. If they want- 
ed their children to grow up in any of those three modes 
of opinion, then train them according to the principles 
of those theories of education. As he (Mr. McGee) 
understood the question, it was this : at the bottom of 
the Christian theory of education was this principle — 
that marriage was a sacrament — a sacred, an immuta- 
ble and a Divine institution. The family formed under 
that sacrament, so far as they lived up to it, was a 
sacred institution, and, therefore, the parents were 
bound morally and spiritually, here and hereafter, for 
the souls of those children committed to their care. 
Secular education he understood to be this : That mar- 
riage was a mere social contract, dissoluble, under 
certain circumstances, by legal intervention ; and that 
the children resulting from it were to be considered as 
mere seeds, to be transplanted into the political nursery 
of the State as soon as possible. Then they — Irishmen 
in the United States — had to choose between the two 
systems. The question with them was practically this : 
Did the present educational system tend to make good 
Christians ? If it did not, though it gave every one of 
their children the knowledge of the philosopher's stone, 
to be able to turn all things into gold, then it was a 
failure, so far as they were concerned, in the eye of 
Christianity. It was a miserable French Jacobinical 
idea that there were such things as children of the 
State. Such might hold in Sparta, where they all lived 
in common. No, their children were their own, and it 
therefore was their prominent duty that their children 
be educated in Christianity, if they hoped, or expected 



IN AxMERICAN HISTORY. 257 

them to live as Christians. [Loud applause.] It might 
take years, and it probably would, and it was better that 
it should take time than be done suddenly, even if 
possible — before they could get thi3 question fully 
understood. But it was the duty of Irishmen in Amer- 
ica, as parents of a posterity, to understand this ques- 
tion clearly, and +o struggle for the day when it should 
be generally admitted throughout the United States. 
On that ground they took their stand ; on the ground 
of the Christian doctrine, that the child belonged to the 
parent — that its education was the duty of the parent ; 
that the State had no right to interfere ; and from that 
position no obstacles, no badinage nor calumny, should 
drive them." [Loud applause.] 

Such, to a great extent, has been the spirit of the 
Catholic priesthood, backed up and sustained by a cor- 
rupt press. There have been some honorable exceptions 
— exceptions, where individuals, governed by an en- 
lightened policy and urged forward by disinterested 
motives, have nobly rallied around, and given their 
cheerful and undivided support to the present system. 
They, too, have called it good, generous and wise — calcu- 
lated to exert a beneficent influence upon society. 

" To this Republic/' said the gifted Meagher, " re- 
nouncing all foreign powers and potentates, have 1 
taken the oath of allegiance. ° ° Faithful to 

the principles on which this community is formed, 
faithful to the laws on which it proceeds and operates, 
faithful to the institutions which distribute the vitality 
while they secure a unity of the whole, faithful, above 
all, to that noble system of public schools, which, in the 
illumination of the public mind, insures the perpetuity 
22 



258 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

of a condition of government and society based upon 
intelligence and good sense, qualifying, in each suc- 
ceeding generation, the entire body of citizens, yet 
more wisely to exercise their great faculties, diminishing 
the chances of the impostor, and, in the end, elevating 
the democracy to the highest level, instead of keeping 
it to the lowest ; the foe of bigotry, from whatever pul- 
pit it may descend, or in whatever garb it may riot or 
play its maddening pranks. ° ° ° I trust, that if 
it be the will of Heaven to crown me with the white 
lilies and the silver crown of age, looking back upon a 
life well spent, I shall be able to say with the great foe 
of Cataline, the conspirator against the Roman Com- 
monwealth, i Rempublicam defensi adolescens, non dese- 
ram senex.' " 

Others, among the laity of the Catholic church, have 
boldly avowed similar sentiments. Columbia's soil is 
the last place, and the free-born race that walk it have 
seen too often the contrast which the world at this time 
presents, to give up the school system at whatever cost. 
Ireland in rags and Italy immersed in gloom, both 
countries beggared by priestly rule and shrouded in the 
gloom of superstition, teach sad lessons. Ignorance is 
the help-meet of superstition. In her dark caves 
chains are forged for the limbs, and shrouds are woven 
for mind and thought. In the sunlight of liberty, 
genius mounts on untired wing, and the mind finds 
scope for action, and freedom from restraint. 

The school question involves tremendous interests. It 
has begotten for itself a love, that binds thousands of 
warm hearts and brawny arms to its support. Foreign- 
ers cross the ocean, and sweep westward like a mighty 



I\ AMERICAN HISTORY. 259 

wave. They come in contact with a busy, intelligent, 
and thriving population. They see that it' their children 
would become competitors for the honor and wealth to be 
obtained by diligence and thought, they must educate 
their heads, and not their arms. The ignorant masses, 
congregating here from Europe, are destined to form 
the muscle of the corporate body of our nation. They 
w r ork our mines, tunnel our mountains, and level our 
forests. They crowd the church of Eome with votaries, 
who, led on by a reckless and idolatrous priesthood, are 
drawn into the rank and file, against which, over and 
through which, the car of pr - forced to make its 

way. Light already has penetrated the veil of gloom 
which has enshrouded their minds. Despite threats and 
persecutions, the children of the more enterprising are 
placed in our schools, where they soon learn to respect 
truth, and detest error. The child is no longer the slave 
of fear, but vaulting to the great truth of Jetferson, he 
boldly grapples with error, and sifts from it grains of 
truth. The idea of Denunciation, Purgatory, and what 
else following in their train, are treated with contempt. 
He casts behind him his fetters, and walks the earth a 
freeman. In this fact lies the secret of the opposition. 
Let the heaven-born radiance of truth find a channel in 
education, to the minds of priest-ridden millions, and no 
amount of priestly craft can longer impede their march. 
They will be skilled in science and art. Letters will 
cultivate their tastes, enlarge their views, and administer 
to their enjoyment. Around an interest so dear to the 
reflective, our public men rallied with steadfast zeal. In 
New York, Michigan, Wisconsin, and various other States, 



260 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

where the system was assailed, the language of the 
reports displayed a wise foresight, and appreciation of 
the merits of the system which enabled an enlightened 
public safely to entrust this principle to their hands. 
Their reports coincide very nearly with that of the 
New York Legislature, the conclusion of which reads 
as follows: 

" Had the founders of this system, at any stage of its 
progress, parceled out the bounty of the State for the 
support of Common Schools, in favor of those based upon 
the peculiarities of any party, or any sect ; or upon any 
of the arbitrary or conventional distinctions that prevail 
in civilized society, your Committee believe that its 
strength would have been frittered away and lost, amid 
the jealousies and contentions it would have engendered ; 
that it would have added a new, if not a fearful element 
to the bitterness of religious and sectarian controversy, a 
controversy which this circumstance alone, would have 
directed with crushing force against the utility and sta- 
bility of our present great system of primary instruction. 
And your Committee, instead of being able to report at 
this time nearly twelve thousand school-houses in the 
State, in successful operation, in which nearly one million 
of children have received the benefits of a common edu- 
cation during the past year, and supported at an expense 
(for teachers 7 wages alone), of more than one and a half 
millions of dollars, it would have been called upon to 
report upon the wreck of a system, efficient only in 
flooding the country with the bitter waters of partisan 
strife, and of religious and sectarian controversy. 

" The genius of our institutions is pre-eminently that 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 261 

of universal religious toleration, and it should never be 
overlooked for a moment, in our legislation upon the 
management of the Common Schools of the State ; hence, 
by granting the prayers of these petitioners, we recog- 
nize the principle that each one of the organized sects, 
or religious denominations, in this State, may estab- 
lish their schools, and be entitled to a share of the 
Common School fund for their support. Granting this 
privilege to one sect, would open the door for applica- 
tions for every sect and denomination in the State ; and 
in view of their number, the conflicting and contradictory 
nature of their tenets, we should regard a.s suicidal the 
attempt to embrace them in the system of our Common 
Schools, or sustain them by its funds. 

" Grant the prayer of these petitioners, and a flood- 
gate of ruin is opened upon our Common School system, 
which future legislation would hardly be able to restrain ; 
for under our system of religious toleration, no resting 
place would be found, until our magnificent school-fund 
was subdivided among every denomination in the State, 
from the ancient and venerable establishment of the Ro- 
man Catholic church, down to the conventicles of the 
spiritual mediums of these latter times. 

" The effects of fractionizing our school-fund among 
religious denominations, seems, to your Committee, to be 
easily calculated. Hence, your Committee should regard 
the first step of the government in that direction, with 
the utmost anxiety and alarm, as a fatal blow struck at 
the prosperity and utility of a system of primary educa- 
tion, which has already become the pride of the State, 
and the wonder of the age. Tour Committee, therefore, 



262 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

unanimously present the following resolution, and recom- 
mend its passage : 

11 Resolved, That the prayer of the petitioners should 
not be granted. 

11 Ashbel Paterson, Nich. C. Blauvelt, 

Wm. W. Forsyth, Wm. Taylor, 

Daniel Stewart, Committee" 

It was evidenced in every direction, that its hold upon 
the minds of men, was so deep and strong that it was 
impossible to disturb the solid foundations on which it 
rests for a support. 

This fact established, the Catholics, to a great extent, 
withdrew their children from the public, and placed them 
in their parochial schools, established by the priests. It 
is a well established fact, that these schools, under the 
guardianship of the priests and bishop, are valueless. 
The exercises are made up principally of the rudiments 
of theology, and are such as lead the boys to shun the 
processes to which they are subjected in the school-room. 
Hence they become truants, not permitted to attend the 
public schools, and acquire vicious habits, in their wan- 
derings about the city. The result is, that scarcely a 
boy can be found in the Catholic schools of our large 
cities, to exceed fourteen years of age. They are called 
free schools, yet such is not the case. Those that attend 
them are invited to pay from six to twelve cents per week. 
At the same time, those not able to pay it, are permitted 
to come. But from the fact that some do, and that all are 
expected to pay this sum, those not having the means, 
or not caring to use them for such a purpose, are con- 
tent to allow their children to grow up in ignorance. 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 263 

It has been well said, that u no one will deny the 
right of any sect to establish schools among themselves 
for the instruction of their children. But while this is 
true, it would be equally absurd to approve, as repub- 
licans, of a course calculated to weaken our influence 
over the masses that are thronging our shores. They 
learn, in sectarian schools, to regard themselves as a 
distinct sect, a people with scarcely a single interest in 
common with their neighbors. They grow up foreign- 
ers, though invested with the functions of citizens. It 
is notorious that the range of studies in these church 
schools is very restricted, and that children confined to 
them can not attain the generous culture which our 
public schools afford. Such children are not tar. _ 
what it most concerns them to know, as future republi- 
cans. They are not instructed in reference to the nature 
of our institutions ; but, what is more, they are inspired 
with the most active jealousy, if not filled with the 
most bitter hatred, of all other denominations. They 
are led to make it a matter of conscience to support their 
church, at whatever pecuniary sacrifice to themselves, 
and at whatever risks to the interests of the Common- 
wealth." 

The question to be decided by the citizens of the 
Republic is this : Sow shall Americans be ed 
Doubt history, ye who can ; but if the past is capable 
of teaching useful lessons — if the experience of a thou- 
sand years is wonh anything — it shows that it is not 
safe to entrust the measureless interests of education 
to that church which created the deep, dense gloom of 
the dark ages. 

Go to Italv, and yon see thousands of intelligent men 



264 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

going through with the debasing mummeries of super- 
stition, while they are rendered unfit to discharge the 
responsibilities of life, and are only able, from training 
and association, to become servants and hirelings of a 
church, which fills that sunniest of all climes with beg- 
gars and serfs. The same is true all over Catholic 
Europe ; it is true of Ireland, and, alas ! it is but too 
true of Canada and South America. A gentleman 
educated in a Canadian college, in speaking of their 
system of education, says : " The Canadian clergy seek, 
evidently, to prepare young men in their colleges, for 
nothing else but places in their ranks. Therefore, if a 
young man choose a worldly avocation, his eyes are 
dazzled by the multiplied phases into which the life he 
has entered revolves around him. Feelings and opinions, 
that be never dreamed of before, assail the narrow con- 
ceptions which he has been taught to nourish in his 
mind. He comes forth like a man long withdrawn 
from the light of the sun, to find himself amid new and 
and wonderful objects, which he can not grasp, because 
he is too busy with their contemplation. ° ° ° In 
those colleges, where instruction purports to be given in 
the elements, as well as in the more advanced branches 
of learning, it is remarkable how deficient a scholar is 
in commercial qualifications and mechanics. A jealous 
conservatism presides over Canadian collegiate education. 
The proscription of newspapers, proves this assertion to 
be correct. Therefore, in view of the fact that, until 
within a few years, the priesthood have held all the 
French educational establishments of the country under 
their immediate control, we can easily account for the 
backward state of things in Lower Canada, and the 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 265 

tameness of the population. "° But this is the system of 
education which many would gladly force upon us, and 
which too many are willing should occupy the proud 
position occcupied by the one that claims the respect of 
all. 

The nunneries of this land are particularly deserving 
of attention. They are tools placed in the hands of the 
church for propagating the faith among Protestants. 
For this reason, they will educate Protestant children 
at less expense than Catholics. Every attention is 
bestowed upon them. The Sisters of Charity, by kind- 
ness, flattery and insinuating acts of devotion, exercise 
an influence over them, which, oftentimes, destroys their 
confidence in the Bible, and produces an impression upon 
their minds, which is only deepened by remonstrance 
and advice. " Every part of the great machine called 
popery is of such a nature as requires study to be fully 
understood." Protestant parents can not believe that 
there is danger in allowing children to receive their 
education from Catholic hands. They will not believe 
it until they find them, in secret, counting their beads 
and performing orisons to the Virgin Mary. Instances 
innumerable could be given to substantiate this position. 
The disclosures of convent life have been substantiated. 
They are real facts, occurring in the history of hundreds 
of young women, fascinated by the quiet beauty that 
characterizes the exterior of these institutions. But 
when it is shown that they lose not only their happiness, 
but their virtue, then the charm is dissipated. 

On July 7th, 1854, William Adams, Mayor of Alle- 

• Life in a Canadian College, April, 1853 

23 



266 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

ghany City, Pa., took a deposition from a young lady, 
possessed of great wealth, who had been placed in the 
palace of the bishop. She testified to the course of the 
bishop, in language which we prefer not to quote. 
Suffice it to say, that her person was violated, and that 
when she resisted, she was told "not to resist a bishop 
or priest, because, if she did, she would not get a reward 
in the other world, and escape the torments of purga- 
tory. M She also told of the results of the illicit inter- 
course with the Sisters of Charity, made apparent by the 
stench of the dead bodies of babies, put to death to avoid 
detection. The threats made to Miss Bunkley — the at- 
tempts made to suppress her story — the course pursued by 
different Catholic nunneries in New England, where girls 
were caught in the streets, and confined against their 
will — the hundreds of Protestant girls constantly being 
entangled in the meshes of popery — speak in thunder- 
tones of denunciation against the institutions, that lie 
in the path of truth, like pit-falls for the ignorant and 
unskilled. " Let me not be told," said Jabez D. Ham- 
mond, in his Political History of New York, " that all 
is safe, and that no danger is to be apprehended — that 
more than three-score years have elapsed since we 
sprung into existence as an independent, sovereign 
republic — that notwithstanding the turbulence and high 
heat of party strife, and the whirlpools of faction, which 
from time to time have threatened the destruction of 
our institutions, all things continue as they were — that 
the experiment has been successfully made, and that 
we may safely anticipate the perpetual enjoyment of 



Volume 2, page 534. 






IX AMERICAN HISTORY. 267 

our civil and religious rights. I am firmly convinced, 
it would be unwise in us to relinquish that unceasing 
vigilance which we have been solemnly assured is the 
price of liberty, and contentedly confide in these repre- 
sentations. The great mass of emigrants from Europe 
are composed of a class of men, the least enlightened, 
and most vicious of the inhabitants of that continent, and 
the tide of emigration from the Old World has, for seve- 
ral of the last years, been astonishingly great, and is 
increasing." When, therefore, we recollect that the 
right of suffrage is now universal, and that the majority 
of the people are our sovereigns, is there not reason to 
fear, that the elements of ignorance and vi<v. which still 
exist among us, will combine and produce an explosion, 
which will bury in ruins this fair fabric of liberty and 
law, created by the labors, and cemented by the blood 
of our fathers ? May I not be permitted to say, that 
although the " Ides of March n have come, they have 
not passed ? 

Again I ask, how are our institutions to be perpetu- 
ated ? How is the prosperous career of the State to be 
secured ? I answer briefly : 1. By inducing in the rising 
generations, habits of industry, sobriety, and temperance. 

2. By early impressing upon the mind of every child, 
the leading principles of civil and religious liberty, and 
the duty of sustaining and preserving order and law. 

3. By encouraging and improving our Common Schools, 
by causing every child to be instructed in them, and by 
establishing a mode of instruction in these institutions 
which shall not only enlighten the intellect, but also 
affect the morals, and reach the hearts of the pupils. 



268 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

" We are looking," said the benevolent and eloquent Dr. 
Channing, " as never before, through the disguises and 
envelopments of rank and classes to the common nature 
which lies below them, and are beginning to learn that 
every being who partakes of it, has noble powers to cul- 
tivate, solemn duties to perform, inalienable rights to 
assert, a vast destiny to accomplish. The grand idea 
of humanity, and 'of the importance of man as man, is 
spreading silently, but surely." 

These are the sentiments and opinions of men who 
have studied the workings of our political system. The 
responsibility of the American citizen is weighty. The 
trust reposed in him involves the destinies of countless 
millions, who are destined to people this vast area of free- 
dom. If, like citizens good and true, we discharge the 
duty imposed upon us, then we may indulge the belief 
that the most sanguine hopes of the patriot will be real- 
ized, the march of this brotherhood, belted by the ties 
of a common interest and destiny, will be onward, and 
that continually ; and our country will be distinguished, 
as well by her moral elevation and intellectual superi- 
ority, as by wealth and secular power. 

When the French stood on the plains of Egypt, facing 
the infuriated Mamelukes, Napoleon pointed their eyes 
to the pyramids, and exclaimed, " Soldiers, twenty centu- 
ries behold your actions ! " 

Would that it were our province to sound the note of 
alarm in the ear of every American, as he stands facing 
the foe of Europe, of progress, and enlightenment — the 
church of Home — he would point their eyes, not to the old 
grave-stones of Egyptian kings, not to the monuments 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 269 

that line the path our fathers trod, but to the hopes 
that tinge with their golden light, the altars of our 
country, on which rest the world's great hope. 

To the nations of the globe, our country is as a city 
throned upon a hill. Its light has gone out along the 
lines of men, cheering the peasant, and blenching the 
cheek of the king. We would point them to our noble 
system of free schools, the urn of hope for the nation — 
these schools constitute the rock against which the floods 
of ignorance are to dash in vain — they constitute the 
citadel of our strength, from whose high battlements and 
towers our country's prophets can read the signs of the 
times, by piercing with their keen vision, the murky veil 
of error and superstition ; by warning us of the clouds 
rising in the sky, and pointing the eye forward, like the 
seers of Judea,to the promised deliverance close at hand, 
they will lead the nation out of the wilderness of error, 
into that land veined by crystal streams, which take 
their rise at the fountain of Inspired Truth. 



270 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 



CHAPTER XII. 

THE CHURCH PROPERTY BILL. 

Its history — The Bill of Senator James 0. Putnam, of New York — 
The charges preferred by Hon. Erastus Brooks against Archbishop 
Hughes. 

The history of the Church Property Bill throws addi- 
tional light upon the machinations of the Papal hier- 
archy, and presents in the clearest light, tangible evi- 
dence that the influences of republican institutions are 
permeating the masses that congregate in the cathedrals 
and obey the behests of the mother church. It shows 
that many belonging to her communion are possessed 
of a spirit of resistance to the domination of the priest- 
hood, and that they propose to avail themselves of the 
rights of citizenship as it respects property, thought, 
and action. 

The priesthood seem desirous of establishing in Amer- 
ica the blighting despotism of Europe. Whenever they 
take the field, they keep the institutions of Eome in 
their eye and the love of the Pope — not of God nor 
man — but of the Pope in their heart. When 0. A. 
Brownson lectured in New Orleans in 1855, he said, 
14 the majority have no right to rule in America," and 
contended " that the church must become the arbiter 
between the State and the subject/' But the people 
seem to think differently. The hope was entertained by 
the priesthood that our system of free schools would be 
destroyed, and that the influence of a general enlight- 






IV AMERICAN HISTORY. 271 

enment might be restrained. Failing here, and fearing 
lest she should lose the vast possession acquired, she 
made repealed endeavors to get into the hands of her 
several bishops the control of the entire secular interests 
of the church. In 1853, a bill was introduced into the 
New York senate authorizing the bishop to hold all 
church property a- a trustee. This bill proposed to 
invest the Archbishop with all the property pertaining 
to the church; not only the colleges, theological semin- 
aries, schools, convents, and nunneries, but all the lands 
and bequests and the particular proper: ry indi- 

vidual congregation of that body : all this was to be 
vested in the bishop, and that too whether the people 
elect or not. 

This was but the renewal of an old strife which dates 
its origin back to the year 1820, at which time it was 
discovered by the prelates of the Catholic church that 
under American institutions, the system of committing 
the control of church temporalities to the laity led to a 
degree of independence of the priesthood, not in keep- 
ing with the absolutism of the Catholic hierarchy. Its 
tendency was to divide power with the clergy. To meet 
this difficulty, the following ordinance was passed in 
the Grand Council of Bishops, held at Baltimore, Oct. 
1, 1829: 

M Council of Baltimore, Oct. 1. 1829. 

Whereas lay trustees have frequently abused the 
right (jure) granted to them by the civil authority, to 
the great detriment of religion and scandal of the faith- 
ful, we most earnestly desire (optamus maxime), that in 
future no church be erected or consecrated unless it be 
assigned by a written instrument to the bishop in 



272 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

whose diocese it is to be erected for the Divine worship 
and use of the faithful, whenever this can be done. 
Approved by Gregory XVI. Oct. 16, 1830. 
This, it will be observed, was expressive of no more 
than an earnest desire. It was an appeal to the amia- 
bility of the Catholic congregations* 

The appeal failed of its purpose, and so much were 
the people disinclined to comply with this policy, when 
not urged as a right, that another step was taken in 
1849, at the seventh Provincial Council of Bishops of 
the United States, held at Baltimore, when a measure 
of revolution was adopted, no less than the divesting 
of the Catholic laity of all power over church tempor- 
alities, and its centralization in the hands of the priest- 
hood. 

The fourth article of the ordinance of that Assembly 
is as follows : 

Art. IV. The Fathers ordain that all churches, 
and all other ecclesiastical property, which have been 
acquired by donations or the offerings of the faithful, 
for religious or charitable use, belong to the bishop of 
the diocese ; unless it shall be made to appear, and to 
be confirmed by writings, that it was granted to some 
religious order of monks, or to some congregation of 
priests for their use. 

In January, 1855, Hon. James O. Putnam, an Amer- 
ican senator from Buffalo, N. Y., introduced into the 
New York senate a bill of which the following is an 
abstract : 

An Act in relation to Conveyances and Devises of Per- 
sonal and Real Estate for religious purposes : 
Sec. 1. Provides that no grant or devise of personal 



IS AMERICAN HISTORY. 273 

or real estate to, nor any trust of such estate for the 
benetit of any person in. any ecclesiastical office and his 
snec ihall vest any interest in such person or his 

•accessor*. 

Sec. 2. Provides that no grant, conveyance, or d 
of real estate, ded: r appropriated, or intended 

so to be. to religious purposes, shall vest any interest 
or estate in any person, unless the grant or devise be 
to a corporation rf the congregation or society occupy- 
ing such property, to be organized under the act in 
relation to the incorporation of religious societies. 

Provides that all grants and devises of such 
property heretofore made to any ecclesiastical office, for 
the use of any congregation or society, and that upon 
the death of the person holding title thereto, the same 
shall vest in the corporation formed by the ooftgregatmi 
or society. 

Sec. 4. Provides that in the event no such corpora- 
tion shall exist at the time of the decease of the eccle- 
siastic holding title, the same shall vest in the State. 

See. 5. Provides that the Attorney General of the 
State shall convey any property so escheated to the 
corporation formed by the society or congregation, 
whenever the evidence of such corporation shall be 
produced. 

It was introduced in accordance with an expressed 
wish, in the form of a petition from a number of Cath- 
olics, who had suffered from the arbitrary course pur- 
sued by their bishop after the visit of the Pope's 
Emissary, Bedini, to this country. 

The church of St. Louis desired to conform, not only 
in their charter, but in their acts, to the Constitution 



274 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

of the State. The Bishops resisted their attempts and 
endeavored to circumvent their wishes by policy, spirit- 
ual bulls and bulls not spiritual. " The bill introduced 
seeks, " said Mr. Putnam, " uniformity in the tenure of 
church property. While my attention has, as a legis- 
lator, been called to the questions involved, I have been 
sensible of the importance of maintaining to all citizens 
of every shade of religious sentiment, the constitutional 
guarantee of the * free exercise and enjoyment of reli- 
gious profession and worship.' While I believe this 
principle is in lo measure violated by the bill proposed, 
I remember that even this guarantee is made by the 
fundamental law, subject to the condition, ' that it do 
not lead to practices inconsistent with the peace or 
safety of the State/ salus populi, suprema lex, is the 
paramount idea of the Constitution. This bill inter- 
feres with no belief, it strikes at no general and long 
established policy of any church, or of any body of 
religionists. It simply provides for the vesting of the 
title of lands dedicated to religious uses, in Trustees of 
the congregation enjoying the same, in accordance with 
a law and policy of the State which are almost co-exist- 
ent with its incorporation into the Federal Union. It 
may lead us to a better appreciation of this subject if 
we refer to that policy, and to the motives which led to 
its adoption. 

" The organization of New York, like that of her 
sister colonies, into a free and independent State, was 
the result of the triumph of the popular principle of 
the right of man to self-government. 

" That organization was the overthrow of all political 
power not emanating from the popular will, and of all 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 275 

undue prerogative on the part of a priesthood. Xew 
York, as she shared its labors and sacrifices, fully sym- 
pathized with the spirit of the Involution, and has ever 
adhered to the republican policy in all matters pertain- 
ing to church or to State. If the founders of our 
State government were careful to secure to the people 
the right of governing themselves, and to throw around 
the citizen the safeguards of a constitutional liberty, 
they were no less careful to confine the clergy within 
their legitimate sphere as spiritual guides. This jeal- 
ousy of clerical influence is one of the most marked 
features of our first State Constitution. Let us look for 
a moment at the rock from which we were hewed. It 
is well, at times, to trace the stream back to its 
fountain. 

The preambles of sections thirty-eight ami thirty- 
nine, of our first State Constitution, which are declara- 
tory of the free exercise of religious liberty, are as 
follows : 

38. And whereas we are required by the benevo- 
lent principles of rational liberty, not only to expel civil 
tyranny, but also to guard against that spiritual op- 
pression and intolerance wherewith the bigotry and 
ambition of weak and wicked priests and princes have 
scourged mankind, this convention doth, &c, (declara- 
tion of free exercises of religion here follows.) 

39. And whereas the ministers of the Gospel are, 
by their profession, dedicated to the service of God and 
the cure of souls, and ought not to be diverted from the 
great duties of their function ; therefore no minister, 
&c,, (concludes with a declaration of their ineligibility 
to any civil or military office.) 



276 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

Thus it appears that at the very origin of our State 
government, when was settled the policy that should 
exist for ages, with such modifications as a progressive 
civilization, and an advancing sentiment of liberty 
might require, our fathers recorded their experience of 
past oppression under priestly rule, and declared it to be 
their conviction that the safety of the State from 
"spiritual oppression and intolerance/' depended upon 
the limitation of the authority of the clergy to what 
they might legitimately acquire in their office as spir- 
itual teachers. Very soon after the adoption of the 
Constitution, in 1784, the Legislature was called upon 
to form a system of government of church temporalities, 
and one was carefully perfected in entire harmony with 
the theory of our political institutions. 

Leaving the clergy " to the service of God and the 
cure of souls," they secured the independence of the 
laity, and the rights of conscience, by the most practi- 
cal imitation of the power of the priesthood which could 
be obtained by legislation. The act of 1784 "to pro- 
vide for the incorporation of religious societies," and 
which is substantially the act under which all church 
property, until very recently, has been held, provided 
that the title of such property should be vested in 
trustees elected by the church, congregation or society, 
occupying and using the same for purposes of religious 
worship. Slight modifications of that act have been 
made to meet the practice of two or three denomina- 
tions of Christians, but none of them yielding the great 
principle, that the laity should have the substantial 
control of the property through their representatives 
elected by the body of the church or congregation. 



FN AMERICAN HISTORY. 277 

This develops to us the policy of the State, and the 
Constitution from which we have quoted reveals the 
consideration which led to its adoption. 

It is a policy alike cautious and republican. It 
recognizes the justice of placing the control of conse- 
crated property in the hands of those by whose sacrifices 
and bounty it was acquired. It manifests that jealousy 
of the power of the priesthood, not necessarily incident 
to their spiritual office, which their own experience, as 
well as the history of centuries of contest, between the 
clergy and the laity, could not but awaken. This act 
secured the rights of conscience and the freedom of 
worship. It realized a central idea of the Revolution — 
a separation of Church and State. It was a practical 
embodiment of the American sentiment : M A PRIEST 
FOR THE PEOPLE, AND NOT THE PEOPLE FOR A PRIEST." 

Under this act, all the religious societies of the State 

soon organized. Protestant and Catholic alike availed 
themselves of its provisions, and the line of demarcation 
of power between the clergy and the laity, contemplated 
by the Constitution, and defined by this enactment, has 
been carefully preserved until within the last few years. 
If it sometimes facilitated a change of dogmas in the 
faith of the worshipers of a particular congregation, it 
has been supposed that what was lost to a self-claimed 
orthodoxy, was more than gained to the rights of con- 
science and the freedom of inquiry. 

Under this republican policy, the different denomina- 
tions of Christians have grown powerful in numbers 
and influence, without any abatement, on the part of 
the people, of respect for their spiritual teachers. On 
the contrary, by divesting the clergy of all power over 



278 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

the church temporalities, and thus removing a cause of 
jealousy and strife, unhappy collisions have been avoided, 
and they have lived as the spiritual guides and the 
friends of their people, who, in turn, have reposed in 
them that confidence, and yielded to them that esteem, 
which belong to consistent piety, and to useful lives. 

Immediately upon the promulgation of the resolution 
of the Baltimore Council, held in 1849, the bishops, in 
their respective dioceses throughout the United States, 
commenced the effort to obtain the surrender of all cor- 
porate churches, on the part of their congregations, and 
the transfer to them, individually, of the titles of church 
property, cemeteries, seminaries of learning, hospitals, 
etc., etc. In most instances in this State, it being made 
a test of good Catholicism, these transfers were made 
without protracted resistance. In other instances, 
among congregations imbued with the spirit of our free 
institutions, and who had learned to recognize as just, 
the division of power between the clergy and the laity, 
which our civil polity has established, this demand was 
resisted. The Catholic laity claimed that their rights 
did not exist by mere sufferance of the clergy. That 
having organized into corporations, in pursuance of our 
laws, they were bound, as good citizens, to abide by the 
policy of that government whose protection they enjoyed. 
When this resistance was protracted, it led to the most 
unhappy controversies. And wherever the congregations 
have finally refused to yield their franchise, and surren- 
der their titles, in obedience to the Baltimore ordinance, 
they have suffered the severest penalties, which can, in 
this country, be inflicted upon the Catholic communicant. 
The church of St. Louis, in the city of Buffalo, is one of 



TN AMERICAN HISTORY. 279 

the congregations who have adhered to the policy of the 
State. This congregation is composed of a French and 
German population, most of whom have been for many 
years residents of the United States. 

Their petition to this body details an unhappy contro- 
versy of several years. The real estate upon which 
this church edifice was erected, was, in 1829, conveyed 
for the use of a Catholic congregation, to be thereafter 
organized, by the late Louis Le Couteulx, a man most 
honorably associated with the history of his adopted city 
and State. In 1838, the congregation was organized 
under the laws of this State, and seven trustees elected, 
in whom the title was rested, by virtue of the act in 
relation to religious corporations, before the passage of 
the Baltimore ordinance. Bishop Hughes " attempted 
to compel the trustees to convey the title of this church 
property to him." After the Baltimore ordinance, more 
vigorous measures were set in operation by the bishop 
of that diocese, to compel the transfer of the title. A 
son of the grantor of the land made a visit to the head 
of the church at Rome, to obtain an equitable adjust- 
ment of the controversy. The result was the deputation 
of Archbishop Bedini. a Nuncio of the Pope, to visit the 
church, and, if possible, settle its difficulties. The 
Nuncio refused any terms except those which had been 
previously made by the bishop, in compliance with the 
Baltimore ordinance and transfer of title. In September 
last, the bishop made his final proposition for an adjust- 
ment, which was rejected. 

For this adhesion to our laws, on the part of the St. 
Louis congregation, their trustees have been excommu- 
nicated. Every sacrament, every sacred privilege most 



280 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

dear to the sincere Catholic, have been denied the 
members of the congregation. 

In their petition they say : 

" For no higher offense than simply refusing to violate 
the Trust Law of our State, we have been subjected to 
the miseries of excommunication, and have had our 
names held up to infamy and reproach. For this cause, 
too, have the entire congregation been placed under ban. 
To our members the holy rites of baptism and burial 
have been denied. The marriage sacrament is refused. 
The priest is forbidden to minister at our altars. In 
sickness, and at the hour of death, the holy consolations 
of religion are withheld. To the Catholic churchman it 
is scarcely possible to exaggerate the magnitude of such 
deprivations. 

" We yield to none in attachment to our religion, and 
cheerfully render to the bishop that obedience in spirit- 
ual matters, which the just interpretation of our faith 
may require ; but in respect to the temporalities of our 
church, we claim the right of obeying the laws of the 
State, whose protection we enjoy." 

While the bishops have been securing the transfer to 
themselves of the title of church property, consecrated at 
the time of the action at Baltimore, they have taken, in 
every instance in this State, so far as I can ascertain, the 
title of all property, which, since that time, has been pur- 
chased for church, educational, or charitable purposes, in 
connection with the Catholic communion. In the county 
of Erie alone, nearly sixty different conveyances of lands 
have been made to John Timon, the bishop of the Buffalo 
diocese, during the last seven years ; and the value of 
this property is estimated at over one million of dollars. 






IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 281 

This property consists of sites of churches, cathedrals, 
hospitals, and educational establishments, beside a large 
amount of yet vacant lands. Some estimate may be 
formed of the vast aggregate of property now vested in 
the three Catholic bishops of New York, from this state- 
ment in relation to a single county, which contains but 
one city, and that having but seventy thousand inhabit- 
ants. The legal effect of this proprietorship in the 
bishop, is to vest the absolute title in him as an indi- 
vidual, so that were he to die intestate, it would go to 
his heirs. But it is presumed that he lives with an 
executed will, which devises this property to his succes- 
sors in office, thus practically creating a close corporation 
sole in the bishop of the diocese. 

The concluding remarks of the eloquent senator em- 
brace so many points and suggestions, pertinent to the 
question, that we give them entire: 

" Why was this ordinance of Baltimore enacted, trans- 
ferring the consecrated property of two millions of Amer- 
ican citizens, for a half hundred foreign priests ? Why 
was this policy adopted for free America, which can exist 
nowhere except with the most absolute governments of 
Europe ? Sir, it was a stroke of policy worthy the con- 
ception of a Hildebrand, far-seeing, appreciative of the 
contagious character of our institutions, and of their 
influence on the American Catholic mind. No wonder 
it met the approval of the Roman Pontiff. That policy — 
perhaps the confession is indiscreet ; but I do not purpose 
any concealment in w r hat I have to say — was necessary 
to retain the absolute ascendancy of their priesthood over 
the Catholic communion. Nothing short of this concen- 
tration of power and influence could retain, in blind 






24 



282 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

subservience, a generation of Catholics born under our 
government. He would be comparatively a wise man 
who should hope to press down, with the palm of his hand, 
the heavings of the volcano, or, by a word, to appease the 
spirit of the storm, as it rides forth on the blast — to him 
who should hope for the birth and education, under our 
republican system, of a generation of men, of a foreign 
parentage, who would bear the yoke of priestly rule as 
tamely as did their fathers. There is contagion in the 
spirit of liberty. Undoubtedly, that " abuse," spoken of in 
the Baltimore ordinance, which consists in a claim, on the 
part of the laity to be represented in the temporal power 
of the church, and to seek its own adaptation to our own 
general system of rule, did exist, even as early as 1829. 
That it now exists to a degree which threatens to weaken 
the power of the clergy over matters not legitimate to 
them, is evidenced by the struggle between the laity 
and the priesthood, in almost every State in the Union. 
Not in the church of Buffalo, alone, is found this spirit 
of protest against the absolute claims of the clergy. The 
church of St. Peter's, of Kochester, is in the same contro- 
versy ; and in other congregations, I understand, in the 
cities of Troy and New York, in Cincinnati, in Louisville, 
in Detroit, indeed all over the country, either covertly, 
or openly, are to be found in the Catholic mind, the 
workings of the republican leaven. I do not mean by 
this, that any revolution is in progress, in relation to 
mere theologic questions. I believe there are none ; but 
the controversy is purely in relation to questions of con- 
trol, and of limitation of the clerical power to their office 
as spiritual teachers. 

11 But the church will answer me, that unless the priest 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 283 

control the altar, there is danger of schism, and that it 
will invite their people to protest against church dogmas 
and church polity. I would reply, that this is the land 
of dissent, that its institutions tolerate and invite dissent, 
that they were founded by those who were said by Eng- 
land's most philosophic statesman, to have embraced a 
religion which was the very u dissidence of dissent/' and 
that its government can not employ itself in forging 
chains for the human mind, or fetters for the conscience. 
On the contrary, it enooaragei research, it is hopeful, 
and not fearful of schisms growing out of enlightened 
inquiry, in all questions of policy, or faith. h> distrust 
is of the individual. Its confidence is in the species. In 
an earlier day, when were urged to Parliament the same 
reasons for forbidding the publication of dissenting 
opinions, Milton, that 

Great orb of song, 

uttered a sentiment worthy <»t' him and of his age, and 
which is expressive of the confidence of the spirit of 
American democracy. * When the cheerfulness of the 
people is so sprightly, that it has not only wherewith to 
guard well its own freedom and safety, but to spare, to 
bestow upon the solidest and sublimest controversy, and 
new invention, it betokens us not degenerated, nor droop- 
ing to a fatal decay, by casting off the old and wrinkled 
skin of corruption, to outlive these pangs, and wax young 
again, entering the glorious ways of truth and prosper- 
ous virtue, destined to become great and honorable in 
these latter ages.' 

14 Was it not our country upon which the prophetic 
vision of his mind rested in that sublime rhapsody, 
when even his genius was kindled with unwonted fires? 



284 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

" ' Me thinks I see in my mind a noble and puissant 
nation, rousing herself like a strong man after sleep, 
and shaking her invincible locks. Methinks I see her 
as an eagle, renewing her mighty youth, and kindling 
her undazzled eyes at the full mid-day beam, purging 
and unsealing her long abused sight at the fountain 
itself of heavenly radiance, while the whole noise of 
timorous and flocking birds, with those also that love 
the twilight, flutter about, amazed at what she means, 
and, in their envious gabble, would prognosticate a year 
of sects and schisms.' 

" No, sir, the Catholic Hierarchy cannot ask our gov- 
ernment to aid in perpetuating its venerable dogmas 
of faith, or its hoary political abuses. The day has 
passed in all governments embodying in any considera- 
ble degree the popular element, which regards the 
plea of prescription in behalf of ancient opinions, 
errors, or systems. The age is a living demurrer to 
this defense. 

" Our government has but one reply to this cry of 
alarm, that in republicanizing the system of rule over 
Church temporalities, we weaken the tie between the 
priest and the people, and invite to independency and 
dissent. 

" Being a government of dissent, and popular in all 
its theory, it can not be moulded to meet more absolute 
systems of rule. It admits the transplantation to its 
soil of every exotic, spiritual or political, that can find 
it genial to its nature. Whether they are so, and can 
bear the transplantation, or whether they languish and 
die, is of no interest to the genius of American Democ- 
racy. Its office is spent when it has taken care that 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 285 

the State suffer no detriment, and that there spring up 
in its midst no hostile element of power. 

M I know the Catholic priesthood have no sympathy 
with these sentiments, nor with the spirit of the age 
which generates them. They as stoutly deny the rights 
we claim for their people as they did under the iron 
rule of the Gregories. Upon every other system, which 
has come in contact with modern civilization, more or less 
impression has been made, modifying their severe 
features, and conforming them to the more liberal - 
tern of the age. But the Procrustean bed of Catholic 
politics remains unchanged. In the crucible of the 
Centuries its svstem of rule has undergone no transmu- 
tation. It took Anglo-Saxon Protestantism about one 
century to work out its illiberality and intolerance. It 
did not spring, like Minerva, from the head of Jupiter, 
a complete creation from its birth. In Old England 
and in New, its origin was marked by the sentiment of 
a persecuting age, and blood was found upon its gar- 
ments. But it bore within itself the elements of its 
own purgation, and to-day it stands before the world 
regenerated from its intolerance. 

m The great end to be attained by this bill, as I have 
argued at length, is to divest the clergy of the power 
of control over church temporalities. The only modifi- 
cation of this bill I have heard suggested, authorizes 
the bishop of the diocese to appoint three trustees, 
should the congregation decline to avail themselves of 
their legal privileges of incorporation. This would, in 
my judgment, leave the evil almost untouched. The 
result would be, that the discipline which has compelled 
so many congregations to surrender their charters, 



286 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

would be brought to bear upon them to compel them to 
waive their rights under the bill, and allow the bishop 
to select his own trustees. This was the very point 
which Bishop Timon was at last prepared to yield to 
the church of St. Louis. Of course the bishop would, 
in every instance, select the most facile instruments, 
who would be invested with a nominal authority, but 
leaving the control still absolute in himself. To resist 
his will would require as much fortitude then as now : 
and how few congregations but would endure almost any 
privation, rather than suffer as all resisting Catholic 
congregations have suffered. I take the liberty of read- 
ing an extract from a letter addressed to me by an 
eminent Catholic, and a trustee of the church of St. 
Louis in Buffalo, bearing witness to these persecutions. 
He says : 

" 'In the United States of late years, the archbishops 
and bishops, setting their will above the laws, met in a 
synod at Baltimore, and adopted a decree, by which no 
church was to be consecrated if not previously deeded 
to the archbishop or bishop in whose diocese it was situ- 
ated ! Not satisfied with that awful step, they declared 
an unrelenting war against all the incorporated Cath- 
olic congregations, and by incessant demands, threats, 
all kinds of religious deprivations, and lastly, by excom- 
munication, succeeded in destroying those lawful asso- 
ciations. 

" ' In Buffalo, there is now but the St. Louis Catholic 
church which is incorporated, but to what religious de- 
privation have they not been condemned by their bishop 
for their resistance to his will ? Their priests taken 
away from their church, the congregation deprived of 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 287 

religious marriage, the sick of the holy sacraments, and 
their trustees excommunicated I I Indeed, it is no won- 
der, after so much suffering, that so many Catholic con- 
gregations should have submitted to their bishops in 
annulling their charters and deeding their churches to 
them. 

Says the Nuncio Bedini, in his farewell letter to the 
Church of St. Louis, " The bishop does not ask for him- 
self the administration ; he is ready to place it in the 
hands of members of your own congregation, but 
pointed by him ! " 

In his farewell letter to Bishop Timon, in alluding to 
the "obstinacy" of the congregation, he foreshadows 
the awful denunciations to which they have been sub- 
jected. " I consider them as not being Catholics at 
heart, and Rt. Rev. sir, should your Episcopal ministry 
inspire you to declare so, in any way, in order that good 
Catholics may know who are their brethren and who are 
not, I leave it to your discretion and to your holy inspir- 
ations." So much for the former governor of Bologna 
and his tender mercies, alike tender to the brave Ujxso 
Bassi, in w T hom were rekindled the ancient patriotism 
and genius of Italy, and to the persecuted church of 
St. Louis. 

How do the horrors of the fatal " interdict" rush 
upon our minds as we read this conflict between the 
people and the priest ! 

Wordsworth's sonnet was written of another age and 

country, but its application is not at all inappropriate 

to republican America. 

44 Realms quake by turns, proud arbitress of Grace. 
The Church, by mandate shadowing forth the power 



288 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

She arrogates o'er Heaven's eternal door, 

Closes the gates of every sacred place. 

Straight from the Sun and tainted air's embrace, 

All sacred things are covered ; cheerful morn 

Grows sad as night, no seemly garb is worn, 

Nor is a face allowed to meet a face 

With natural smile of greeting. Bells are dumb, 

Ditches are graves, funeral rites denied, 

And in the church-yard he must take his bride« 

Who dares be wedded. Fancies thickly come 

Into the pensive heart, ill-fortified, 

And comfortless despairs the soul benumb." 

I can not resist the impulse to read one additional 
paragraph from the same letter, expressing the senti- 
ment of a vast body of intelligent Catholics throughout 
the land. He says : 

" It is highly time that the Legislature should cast an 
eye of commiseration and protection upon us, by the 
adoption of a law putting a stop to the encroachments 
of the bishops and Catholic clergy in general, specifying 
that all church property should only be possessed by 
their right owners, the people who have paid for them." 
1 will only add that this is but one of many similar 
expressions I have received from the Catholic laity of 
different congregations in the State. And has it come 
to this, that the Catholic laity of our State implore its 
Legislature to " commiserate and protect" them from 
ecclesiastical outrage? Will New York refuse this 
protection ? They have asked for bread ; will she give 
them a stone ? They have asked that she maintain the 
spirit of her own laws ; will she allow it to be borne 
down by the despotic policy of a priesthood ? 

I said, in the outset of my remarks, that this bill 
struck at no universal practice of the church. 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 289 

In France, the temporal administration of the church 
is in the council of Fabrique, (board of trustees.) who 
are chosen by the municipal council, the latter b^ing 
elected by the people in the several communes. In 
part of the German States, Belgium and other parts of 
the continent, which have been under the French domi- 
nation, the Catholic temporalities are administered in 
the same manner, by laymen. The same exists in 
Switzerland. 

Tn France, the clergy can not accept donations by 
will, or otherwise, for any benevolent establishment, 
without the sanction of the government, and then it is 
to be under the control of the civil power. 

Thus it will be seen that the policy which has confis- 
cated twenty-five millions of property, belonging to two 
millions of American citizens, to a half-hundred priests, 
whose first allegiance is to the Papal See — is a policy 
especially reserved for republican America ! This off- 
shoot of absolutism, which can flourish nowhere outside 
of Spain and Portugal, where deceased Protestants are 
buried like dogs, if buried at all, where the torch of 
persecution is ever lighted — has been transplanted, has 
grown and flourished on the soil of freedom ! This is 
the political paradox of the age. It is deeply implanted, 
and already begins to overshadow the State. But one 
question is unsolved: will you now lay the legislative 
axe to the root of this upas, or will you leave it to be 
uptorn at a future day, by the storm of Beyolution? 

In the Senate, March 6th, Erastus Brooks, one of the 
editors of the New York Express, supported the bill and 
spoke in relation to " the Papal power in the State, and 
the resistance to this power in the Temporalities of the 



290 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

Church, as recently seen in the United States." He 
showed that the political State is protestant in its char- 
acter if not in its constitution, that its Eepublican 
success has been mainly founded upon its Protestant 
religion, that other systems of faith are not in harmony 
with true civil and religious liberty, and that we are 
called upon to uphold and encourage all who are seek- 
ing to secure civil and religious independence from the 
control of a despotic power. 

On this broad platform he took his stand and plead 
not for Catholics alone, but for a great principle, which 
underlies the entire fabric of our Constitution. 

" The independent church movement," said he, " start- 
ed in this State, and caused by occurrences which have 
transpired at Buffalo and Eochester and elsewhere, is 
sympathized with and encouraged, more or less, through- 
out the land." He referred to the outrage upon Father 
Brady, at Hartford, Conn., as an event addressing itself 
to. the sympathies of the civilized world. " This man 
sickened and died in the discharge of his priestly duties. 
His pathway to the grave was one of strife and battle. 
He appropriated $20,000 of his own means and all he 
could beg from others, to erect a house of worship. He 
was a good man, beloved by his followers and respected 
by all who knew him. But he was displeasing to his 
masters, and, therefore, banished from his flock, ex- 
cluded from his own church and, for a time, denied the 
right of mass and sepulture in the very church and 
church-yard whose walls he had built and whose altars he 
had consecrated. The Bishop of Hartford, in the same 
spirit, sought to establish a Bomish German Church in 
New Haven. The German Catholics remonstrated, and 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 291 

'- Resolved, That we, Roman Catholics, earnestly 
protest against such proceedings, and declare to the 
Bight Rev. Bishop, that ire do not want a German Ro- 
man Catholic Church in Now Haven. 

" Resolved, That we have suffered already in our 
father-land too much from priestcraft and kingcraft, 
and that we are here in our new home, thank our Lord 
and God, in at least thirty churches other than Roman 
Catholic; that we are free from that yoke, and that 
every one of us can worship his God according to his 
best belief and conscience. " 

A mandate from Rome removed four of the clergy 
from the Catholic College of Chicago. The people, 
deeply grieved, have appealed to the Pope. But their 
case is hopeless. What is true of the Church in the 
past, is true in the present. As Mr. Putnam says, 
"The political theory of the Catholic Hierarchy is in 
direct antagonism to the republican principle. Its the- 
ory is, that the individual man is absorbed in the Cath- 
olic religionist, and the religionist in the head of the 
church. The first allegiance of the true Catholic, ac- 
cording to the theory, is to the Papal power, his alle- 
giance to human governments entirely subordinate. 
This doctrine is as boldly avowed in this country as it 
is in Rome. One of the most carefully written papers 
of Mr. Brownson, in his Catholic Review, a gentleman 
of high endowments, and who has recently, in an ap- 
pointment to a professorship in a Catholic University, 
received the highest evidence of Catholic confidence, in 
speaking of this doctrine of allegiance, employed this 
language : 

"' If the Church should direct the Catholic citizens 



292 



THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 



of this American Republic to abolish the Constitution, 
the liberty and the very existence of their country, as 
a sovereign state, and transfer it to the crown of Louis 
Napoleon Bonaparte, they are bound, by a Divine ordi- 
nance, to obey/ 

" We are not aware of a single Catholic sovereign in 
modern history, that has regarded religion in any other 
light than as a branch of the police, although several 
of them have been personally pious. As princes, they 
have asserted the total separation of the two orders, 
and in their public and official conduct, have looked 
upon the Church merely as the auxilliary of the Gov- 
ernment, and religion as subordinated to the State. It 
is to this fact that we must attribute the frightful scan- 
dals of Catholic Europe for the last two centuries, and 
the wars which followed for over a hundred years, 
enabled the Catholic sovereigns to assert their indepen- 
dence, in temporals, of the spiritual power, to suppress 
the estates, and establish their absolute power. 

" This principle, and its most natural illustration, is 
found in a recent number of the civila catallica, pub- 
lished at Rome, and the immediate or ban of the Pope. 
That paper, of date 5th August, 1854, submits the fol- 
lowing to the world: ' That excommunication by the 
Church has, as an unavoidable result, the dissolution of 
the tie of subjection, and of the oath of fidelity.' 

" I take the liberty of quoting the language of the 
New York Tribune, commenting upon the declaration, 
and which well says, ' according to this, if a Pope should 
lay his ban upon the government of the United States, 
Catholic subjects of that government would become, 
ipso facto, absolved from all fidelity thereto.' n 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 293 

These facts opened the eves of the laity to the 
tyranny of the priesthood. The spirit manifested by 
the Catholics of Connecticut, was a spark that, falling 
into the magazine, caused an explosion that shook the 
foundations of the church of Rome in the Republic. As 
Mr. Brooks .said : 

u What is true of the members of the St. Louis 
church, is true of many in my own city, of many, as 
we know, in New England, at the West, in all parts 
of the land, and, I would fain hope, throughout the 
world. Indeed, from the St. Lawrence to the Gulf of 
Mexico, and from America to Italy, the question of 
church independence, in matters of temporal right, and 
in the control of church property,, is now engaging the 
earnest attention of the Christian world. Roman 
Catholicism. Mr. Chairman, in all matters of power, is 
grasping and aggressive. It is wedded to principles of 
despotism. It makes the Pope the supreme governor 
of the world, and second only to the Creator. His 
power as successor of St. Peter and Christ, as he claims 
to be, even at Rome, comes not from the people of Italy, 
but from an assembly of cardinals convened at Rome. 
The Pope would not consent, nor would the cardinals 
consent, nor would the bishops consent, that their chief 
should part with his temporal sway and dominion. I 
propose to offer some proofs of what I say. The present 
Pontiff, in his ecclesiastical letter, dated Gaeta, in 1849, 
said : 

♦The spiritual power could not be separated, nor do without the 
temporal dominion, it being necessary to keep them united in order 
to maintain the splendor and grandeur of the Catholic church.' 

" The Pope rejected the Roman Constitution, stealthily 



294 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

fled from the Vatican, and from Rome, from country, 
and from people, because, among other things, the first 
sentence in that Constitution declared ' sovereignty is 
by eternal right in the people/ and because it was also 
declared in that constitution that 

* The Roman Republic provides for the education of every citizen, 
in order that each one may meliorate his own condition by industry 
work and enterprise/ 

(i The Pope was not willing to accept the condition of 
religious or church independence, eagerly tendered him 
in the 7th and 8th constituent principles of the proposed 
republic, and what were they? 

1 1st. That the Catholic religion is the religion of the State. The 
use of civil and political rights does not depend on religious creed. 

* 2d. The head of the Catholic church shall have from the Republic 
all necessary guarantees for the independent exercise of his spiritual 
power. 

"But it is denied in Congress and elsewhere, that 
the head of the church of Eome exercises temporal 
power. As well deny that the sun shines, or that there 
is the See of Eome. What was it but this papal See 
that destroyed Frederick II. for defending his civil 
rights against ecclesiastical usurpations? Three gene- 
rations passed away before the secular power gained its 
ascendency upon a field of blood, and in all ages there 
have been the same examples of audacity. 

"We feel this papal power far less in the United 
States than in Europe, because there it is more associated 
with ignorance, superstition and despotism. Behold 
what it has done, or rather left undone, for Italy — for 
Spain — and for Ireland ; and the evil it has wrought in 
these countries, it would do for us if it could. The 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 295 

system is relaxed here, because free, educated men can 
not bear such restraints. 

M Already there is a cordon of bishops, priests and 
vicar-generals, stretching from the Atlantic to the 
Pacific. About 3,500,000 of its votaries are now in the 
United States, besides sixteen hundred priests, forty 
bishops, seven archbishops, one hundred colleges, seven- 
teen hundred churches, numerous convents and nunne- 
ries ; and all these are banded and combined, and not 
divided, as are the Protestants, into many sects. The 
supremacy of the church over the State, so far from 
being untrue, is almost a church dogma ; and the Ro- 
manist, who to-day would, if need be, sacrifice the State 
for the church, would be sainted, blessed and shrined at 
Rome. I have been amazed to hear any one deny this. 
It is recorded in church canons and church bulls, over 
and over again. It is written upon a thousand pages 
of church history, and for many centuries of time. 

11 In this free land, the few Catholics born upon our 
soil, like those from Maryland, and of which Charles 
Carroll was a type, and some few educated persons, 
under the influence of more intelligent ideas of personal 
liberty and priestly authority, decline to submit to the 
tyranny of poutifical power. Let me add to what I 
have said, the words of the great Machiavelli, he who was 
strangled for uttering the truth, and for his endeavors 
to give deliverance to Florence : ' If Italy? says he, 
* has always been the prey, not only of barbarians, but 
also of any foreign power willing to attack it, we Italians 

ARE INDEBTED FOR IT TO THE POPES ALONE. ' Who, 

asked a brave man in the Sardinian Parliament, the 
last month, invited Pepin to Italy ? Stephen II. Who 



296 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

called Charlemagne? Adrian I. Arnoff the German, 
the two Othos, Henry II., Conrad the Salic, Charles 
d'Anjou, were called by the Popes. French, Saxons, 
Swedes, Spaniards, Germans, Swiss, Hungarians, and 
even Turks — all of them were called to Italy by pon- 
tiffs of Eome. Since the revolution of 1848, Austrians, 
Neapolitans, Spaniards and French have all been the 
guardians of Italian tyranny, while Italians have been 
watched and hunted, exiled and imprisoned, condemned 
and executed. 

" Look at Italy, now, as seen in what are called the 
States of the Church. A little while since, upon an 
area of 27,280 square miles, and with a population of 
less than 3,000,000 people, there were 53,000 priests, 
1,825 monasteries and 612 nunneries, protected not by 
a Eoman, but by a Swiss soldiery, of four or five thou- 
sand men. One day it is an Austrian army in com- 
mand ; another, Swiss hirelings ; another, Neapolitan 
soldiers, and to-day it is the protection of French bayo- 
nets. Look, even now, at the city of Eome, with its 
chapel of the Madonna, in the church of St. Augustin, 
hung with dirks and knives, (as another chapel there is 
hung with human bones, formed into chandeliers and 
curious devices,) given up on condition of pardon and 
absolution for all past offences. 

11 The little government of Sardinia, with a population 
of five millions of people, has six hundred and four 
religious societies or houses, and these convents, with 
th • church, possess a domain of property valued at 
eighty-nine millions of dollars ! It is proposed to 
suppress a few religious orders of the most obnoxious 
character, but none of those whose duty it is to admin- 






IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 297 

ister to the sick, or to preach or teach. But the Pope 
threatens his bull of excommunication, and the Sardinian 
bishops threaten their anathemas. No wonder, for their 
annual incomes are $25,000 to the Archbishop of Turin, 
$21,000 to the Archbishop of Monota, more than 820,000 
to the Archbishop of Sardinia and Oristano, $19,000 to 
him of Mercelli, while the poor curates, who perform 
the really hard services of the church, receive duly 
ninety-five dollars a year !" 

In conclusion, Mr. Brooks showed that John Hughes, 
Archbishop of New York, had about £5,000,000 of pro- 
perty vested in him, not as John Hughes, Bishop, nor 
as John Hughes, Archbishop, nor as John Hughes, 
trustee for the great ltoinan Catholic church, but as 
plain John Hughes. He showed by documentary evi- 
dence, that some of these parcels of property coyer whole 
squares of land, and nearly all of them are of great 
value. The rule of that church is never to part with 
property, and to receive all that can be purchased. 

The common law of the Baltimore ordinance of 1852, 
is a step back to the dark ages. The anathemas of the 
Council of Trent were hurled against the laity and 
clergy who would not resist even the State itself, should 
the state attempt to give laymen, or any beside priests 
and bishops, the control of church property. It was a 
question of church property which brought Bedini to 
the United States. But the legislature of Xew York, 
despite the opposition or diplomacy of the priesthood, 
passed the bill, and threw upon the Catholic bishop the 
responsibility of opposing the will of the State. There 
is in America a deep under-current of liberal feeling 
which can not be smothered or longer suppressed. The 



298 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

patriots of this land love liberty too well, to see her 
altar fires burn dim without adding fuel to the flame. 
The free genius of our institutions, resembles the sun 
shining over the world and rising always till it has 
reached the zenith ; while it roars and bellows under 
ground like the fiery waves of an unexplored volcano, 
causing the earth to tremble, so long as the heel of a 
foreign despotism attempts to keep down the safety- 
valve. Like the volcano, ever and anon in maddening 
fury it bursts forth, bearing away in its onward march 
every obstacle in its path, and burying them in its burn- 
ing sepulchre. 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 299 



CHAPTER XIII. 

THE RELIGIOUS FREEDOM OF EUROPE A 
DESIDERATUM TO AMERICANS. 

The overthrow of Religious Liberty in the old world — Its influence 
upon America — Do Catholics fight as freemen? — Archbishop 
Hughes — His history and pretensions — Metropolitan meeting in 
1853, in behalf of Religious Freedom. 

The years 1848 and 1849 were memorable eras in 
European history. They saw the birth, growth, and 
decay of Italian freedom. Hungary fell from a state 
of independence, and became the footstool of Austrian 
despotism. The names of Louis Kossuth, Governor of 
Hungary, and of Joseph Mazzini, ruler of the Italian 
Republic, for a time blazed like stars in the constella- 
tion of freedom. Defeat and dismay now envelops 
the history of these individuals with a somber shade, 
and their prophecies and words of counsel no longer 
serve as the charts of liberal action. The temporal 
power of the Pope was overthrown, and Pius IX. was 
driven from his pontifical chair on the 24th of Nov., 
1848, disguised as a footman of the Bavarian minister. 
He arrived safely in Gaeta, about four miles from 
Naples, where he lived in regal splendor housed in the 
palace of Pontici. On the 5th of August, 1848, Milan 
capitulated, and the Grand Duke of Tuscany took 
refuge in flight. The Italian Waterloo was fought in 
Navora, a small town in Sardinia, on the 23d of March, 



300 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

1849. Charles Albert was defeated. On March 3d, 
1849, the Italian Kepublic appointed Mazzini, together 
with Armelli and Saffi, a triumvir, who received the 
full powers of the Italian States. 

The temporal power of the Pope had been tottering 
since 1789, when the first blow of the French Ee volu- 
tion was struck by Napoleon I. Henceforth the bulls 
of the Vatican were treated with contempt ; and in 1849, 
it became certain that some artillery beside paper 
denunciations was required to reinstate his Holiness. 
France in 1848 became nominally a republic, and Louis 
Napoleon became President. With a jealous eye he 
watched the growth of the Italian States, and joined 
hands with Joseph of Austria to put out the flame, 
flashing a brilliant light across the pathway of Europe. 

For this reason, in 1848 Naples sent an army to re- 
instate the Pope. Spain furnished an army to assist at 
the ceremony. France sent Oudinot and a large force 
to Civita Vecchia to occupy the city, and in time to 
gain possession of Eome, that he might maintain the 
due influence of France in central Italy. The armies 
of Austria were already there. Against this mighty 
force, and opposed to the conspiracy of the crowned 
heads of Europe, was Joseph Mazzini and his patriot 
band composed of students, tradesmen, statesmen, and 
soldiers. A foreign despotism prevailed. The Pope 
was reinstated on his pontifical throne. The Grand 
Duke of Tuscany returned to his place, and the shadow 
of despotism covered all that fair land. Austrian and 
French bayonets destroyed freedom in all the States 
save Sardinia. Sardinia stands like a great rock in a 
weary land, from whose grand summit the banner of 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 301 

hope yet waves. The Constitution of Tuscany, adopted 
in 1848, by Jesuitical influence was abolished. Meas- 
ures were adopted to arrest the spirit of inquiry. Dur- 
ing the period of the Revolution, many thousand copies 
of the Sacred Scriptures in the Italian language, were 
published in Florence, and some ten or twelve thousand 
copies were put in circulation. For the space of a year 
this was done with the consent of the government. God 
was publicly recognized, and the Gospel read by Italian 
freemen was re-uttered with a lavish hand. Little 
meetings were held in private houses. For several 
months, also, faithful young men from among the Wal- 
denses preached the Gospel, and the word of the Lord 
had free course and was glorified. But when Catholic 
rule had regained sway, the Italian preaching in the 
Swiss chapel was interdicted. In the spring of 1851, 
persecutions commenced, and six individuals of note 
were arrested while reading the fifteenth chapter of 
John's gospel, and thrown into prison. 

The trial of Francisco Madiai and his wife Rosa in 
June, 1852, attracted the attention of the Protestant 
world. The circumstances of the trial, the condition of 
the prisoners, their child-like declaration of faith in 
Christ, and their imprisonment in different prisons some 
fifty miles apart — the defense of the talented Maggi- 
orani, and their close confinement — awoke sympathies 
in the breasts of Christians living in both hemispheres, 
which resulted in a reaction that served as au initiative 
to the overthrow of the Papal rule in America. 

At the commencement of the trial, Sig. Madiai de- 
clared that though he was born in the church of Rome, 
he was now a Christian according to the Gospel — that 



302 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

his convictions had existed for many years, but " have 
acquired strength from the study of the word of God. 
It has been a matter between God and my own soul, 
and was outwardly manifested when I took communion 
in the Swiss church." He was sentenced to fifty-six 
months' imprisonment, and his wife to forty-five. When 
it became known that the health of one had given 
away, while that of the other was failing, and that 
other persecutions were going on in Florence — the Pro- 
testants of Great Britain, Holland, France, Germany, 
and Switzerland, sent a deputation of ten men distin- 
guished for piety and social worth, to sue for the clem- 
ency of the Grand Duke. They were refused a personal 
interview. Whereupon they addressed a note to his 
royal highness, and presented an address in which they 
requested for Protestants, the enjoyment of the same 
liberty, which the nations they represented granted to 
those of the Eoman Catholic faith. 

Their report, made on their return, presents many 
astounding facts : " On the one hand, thousands of peo- 
ple in Florence, through the reading of the Scriptures, 
have turned away from the doctrines and the worship of 
the Roman Catholic church ; and on the other many 
were made to suffer from the rigor of the government ; 
some were driven to exile, others were confined in prison, 
and others still were threatened with death." 

The whole Christian world was amazed and shocked. 
The English and American press at once threw their 
tremendous influence in favor of religious liberty, and 
exposed the utter heartlessness of a persecuting church. 
The London Times, in speaking of the Madiai, said : 
" Guilty of having read the word of God for their own 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 303 

instruction ; convicted, without a particle of evidence, of 
having sought to impart to the souls of their friends 
the peace which had descended on their own, Francisco 
and Rosa Madiai had violated the canon law, and incurred 
a penalty exceeding in severity the sentence usually 
alloted to felons. There is nothing to be surprised at in 
all this. The vengeance of Rome against heretics is 
measured only by her power to punish them, and in 
Tuscany that power is virtually uncontrolled. We only 
know the ultra-montane party in this country as persons 
ever ready to rail against our laws, our institutions, and 
our faith ; but we do them much injustice if we suppose 
that they are people who delight to expend their strength 
in words. We are not to believe, that because they por- 
tioned our country into imaginary dioceses, and dubbed 
themselves with ridiculous titles, their zeal is of that 
kind which can explode in boasting, or evaporate in 
pageantry. It is from weakness, not from want of will, 
that Rome has recourse to those airy weapons. Give her 
the power, and we may be well assured that she would 
rather strike than scold, rather scourge than anathe- 
matize." 

But this feeling was not confined to the English people, 
nor did such language characterize the English press 
alone. The Commercial Advertiser used language as 
forcible and true, when it said : " Whatever of vague be- 
lief had gained ground in the world, that Popery had 
become, from conviction, or from policy, more tolerant, 
or less vindictive and cruel ; whatever of hope had been 
encouraged, that the despots of the European continent 
were less in subjection to the Sovereign Pontiff, and their 
governments were enlightened on the subject of religious 



304 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

liberty — has been annihilated, and the cloven foot of the 
conscience-crusher is as plainly seen as ever. But the 
matter can not be allowed to rest here, as the Duke of 
Tuscany and his advisers would readily comprehend, 
were they not blinded by the vindictive spirit of an ex- 
clusive and persecuting church. So long as men remain 
imprisoned witnesses of Papal tyranny, so long will the 
Christian nations of the earth watch with jealous vigil- 
ance every movement of the Papal power, and become 
more and more firmly resolved, that no such authority 
shall ever be exercised over their citizens or subjects." 

Lewis Cass, the distinguished Senator from Michigan, 
introduced a resolution, and made before the Senate an 
able speech regarding religious liberty. Hon. Edward 
Everett wrote an able letter to the government of Tus- 
cany, asking that the poor persecuted readers of the 
Bible, might be permitted the enjoyment of their rights 
of conscience. On the 7th of January, 1853, there was 
held in Metropolitan Hall, one of the largest and most 
important meetings ever convened in the city of New < 
York. The statement made by Dr. Baird, the chief 
facts of which have been given, and the resolutions of Dr. 
Potter, were widely commended and approved. The 
effect of the meeting was electrical. The speeches of the 
most distinguished champions of Protestantism in Amer- 
ica, flew with the lightning to all parts of the land. In 
Baltimore, in Newark, and in various places, large and 
enthusiastic meetings were held, all tending toward the 
same result, and working out the same glorious recog- 
nition of the freedom of conscience in matters of faith. 
A voice of cheerful response, and grateful remembrance, 
was borne from Tuscany herself. 



IN' AMERICAN HISTORY. 

Memorials were sent to Washington from all parts 
of the land, and were referred by the Senate to the 
Committee on Foreign Relations. The Hon. J. R. Un- 
derwood, of Kentucky, was charged by the committee 
with the preparation of the Report. 

He claimed that ' ; There are two principles in regard 
to the worship which men owe their Creator, of an an- 
tagonistic nature, prevailing to a greater or less extent 
in the different parts of the world. The one principle 
is, that the duties of religion, or the worship of God, is 
a personal matter, of which each individual has a right 
to judge and decide for himself. This principle allows 
the utmost latitude and freedom of conscience. The 
other subjects the duties of religion and the worship 
which man owes the Creator, to the control of the polit- 
ical power of the State, and allows that power through 
ecclesiastical bodies to prescribe forms and creeds, and 
inflict punishments for non-conformity. In other words, 
the latter principle unites Church and State ; and gives 
the government authority to exercise influence, if not 
positive control, in forming the religious creeds of the 
people, by preferring one religion to another, and sup- 
porting by taxation religious establishments." 

He showed that the United States, singly and col- 
lectively, guaranteed religious freedom to all, and that, 
11 accustomed as they are to unlimited religious liberty" 
at home, it is but natural that the " restraints and ob- 
stacles interposed to prevent the open worship of God 
according to the dictates of their own conscience, when 
abroad, are regarded by them as unjust and oppressive." 

When Jesus Christ said to the apostles, " All power is 
given unto me in heaven and in earth ; go ye. therefore, 
26 



306 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name 
of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, 
teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have 
commanded you," and also, " Go ye into all the world 
and preach the Gospel to every creature" — the necessary 
inference seems to be, that it was his design that every 
creature should hear the words of the Gospel ; and if to 
hear, then to judge and form opinions for himself in 
regard to the things spoken of. "Faith cometh by 
hearing, and hearing by the word of God," but " how 
shall they hear without a preacher ?" From these and 
similar texts, it would not be difficult to demonstrate 
that it was the duty of all nations professing Christian- 
ity, to open wide their doors for unlimited toleration. 

Such was the language used by Senators of our great 
republic. The sermon preached by the nation through 
her Senate chamber and Cabinet, produced an impression 
upon the entire religious world. These uprisings in 
favor of religious liberty rendered the position of Cath- 
olics unpleasant. They found it necessary to wipe off 
the stain of persecution from their church, or else to 
defend their course. 

Dr. Bethune, in his eloquent speech at Metropolitan 
Hall, called upon Archbishop Hughes publicly to join 
them, in calling upon the Duke of Tuscany to set free 
the imprisoned captives. " If this oppression be not the 
work of Koman Catholicism, he can not, he will not 
refuse to join in the extension of that principle over 
which he rejoices. If he does not join us, we shall be- 
lieve that such oppression is part and parcel of Roman 
Catholicism, and that if they had the power here, they 
would act like the Duke of Tuscany. This is the point 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 307 

to which we come. We have stronger sympathies in one 
cause than another, and it is possible that I may have 
them ; but I verily believe, if I know my own heart, 
that if this were a case of religious oppression of a Jew 
or Turk, much more the oppression of a Roman Catho- 
lic, whom yet I hold to be a fellow Christian, I may say 
my indignation would be as strong as it is now, and I 
would lift up my feeble voice in advocacy of the great 
principle, that, let a man be Jew, Turk, Papist, or 
Protestant, let him alone. Let him talk with God, and 
let his God talk with him ; and, therefore, it is not as a 
Protestant, but as a Christian citizen, of a free land, 
that I am glad to see my Catholic fellow citizens as free 
as myself; therefore it is, that I desire to protest 
against this oppression, and I call upon my Catholic 
brethren to join me in the protest." 

This brought fJohn Hughes out in a letter published 
the 18th of February, 1853, entitled, " The Madiai 
and the Proceedings in the United States." The letter 
presents a striking contrast to the open and out-spoken 
enthusiasm that characterized the speeches and resolu- 
tions of the Madiai meeting. 

Dr. Alexander, of London, once said, that " If you 
compare the pages of a genuine Protestant divine with 
those of a Catholic, apart altogether from any diversity 
of sentiment, there is a difference of intellectual char- 
acter, which can not but at once strike the attention of 
the reader. In the Protestant he will find a breadth 
of conception, a freedom of thought, and an energy of 
argument, which he will in vain search for in the Cath- 
olic ; while in the latter he will not fail to be struck 
with the timid caution, the scrupulous hesitancy, the 



308 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

minute distinctions, the freedom and vigor which mark 
his style." It struck us that a better description could 
not be given of the letter than the general statement 
made by the English divine. As this is the last time 
we shall be compelled to notice the writings or charac- 
ter of Archbishop Hughes, we will devote a little space 
to the life of the leader of Catholicity in America. 

John Hughes was born in the northern part of Ire- 
land, in 1798. At the age of 19, he removed to Amer- 
ica to pursue his studies, preparatory to the priesthood. 
He passed several years in St. Mary's College, Mary- 
land, was ordained in the year 1825, and shortly after 
was appointed pastor of a church in Philadelphia, where 
he remained until 1838, when he was appointed Bishop 
Administrator of the diocese of New York. In 1850, 
he was made Archbishop by Pius IX. 

An Irishman by birth, he possesses to an eminent 
degree the shrewdness, cunning and versatility of talent 
that characterizes that nation, so noble in the past, and 
distinguished for orators, statesmen and poets, above 
almost any other — he has too, that far-reaching policy, 
the pleasing address and the happy faculty of convert- 
ing the artillery of his enemy into instruments of de- 
fense, which render him a subtle foe, a powerful friend 
and a bold champion. He is smooth-tongued, polite, 
sententious, highly disciplined in manner, mind and 
mode. Masterly in diplomacy, he has been selected by 
his church for every task of difficulty, or post of 
honor, on account of his great capacity. He is in 
America the mouth-piece of the Catholic Hierarchy. 
Friends rally around him in pride, politicians have 
been wont to quail before his attacks, or quietly 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 309 

shoulder arms as supporters of his policy and sharers 
of the spoils. 

His career has been popular, brilliant and successful. 
His fame is already safe, and, in the Catholic world, 
his praises are on every tongue. It was not strange 
then, that his letter attracted general attention, as it 
was regarded as the exponent of the Catholic church. 
The letter is full of evasive prevarications and bad 
logic. It rants, as usual, in regard to dangers to be 
apprehended from rousing the Catholic masses — speaks 
of our indebtedness to them for soldiers to fight our 
battles — defines conscience, and closes with relating the 
wrongs of the oppressed Catholics in America. It slurs 
at the ragged schools of London, and claims for Cathol- 
icism the honor of being favorably disposed to the trans- 
lation and circulation of the Word of God. 

There are two statements in this letter, to which we 
desire to call attention. In the first, he says: " The 
wisdom and expediency of giving any encouragement 
to religious excitements in connection with civil and 
social rights, appear to me extremely doubtful. The 
Catholics of this country have had nothing to do with 
the trial and imprisonment of the Madiai, in Florence." 
Just here let us inquire if the Protestants had anything 
to do with the imprisonment of the Madiai? Surely 
they had not, and the fact that they had not enabled 
them as one to remonstrate with the Grand Duke ; and 
all that was asked of the Catholics was simply to sign 
the remonstrance. It was supposed, that if they were 
in favor of religious liberty, as they professed to be, 
they would do so cheerfully. But, as Dr. Bethune pre- 
dicted, it did not come. Priests not only refused to sign 



310 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

the memorial, but, in many instances, openly and grossly 
insulted those who asked them for their signatures. 

He says : " Would it not be wiser to recognize the 
rights of each denomination, and of each individual, 
fully and frankly, as they are recognized by the Con- 
stitution of the country ?" This sentence reveals again 
the trait of character which distinguishes the bishop. 
Surely, every school-boy knows that the rights of each 
denomination and individual are recognized in the United 
States ; and it was for this recognition in Tuscany and 
throughout the world, that our Senators, our orators and 
our statesmen have been pleading. But the sentence to 
which we designed devoting our attention reads as follows : 

" The time may come, and perhaps sooner than is 
expected by our wisest public men, when the United 
States will have need of the support of all her citizens. 
Who can tell whether the future of this country may 
not reveal dangers, either from foreign enemies or from 
internal divisions, which will test the loyalty and fidelity 
of every citizen, of whatever religion? In such an 
emergency, the Catholics, in spite of the denunciations 
to which they have lately been exposed, will be found 
among the fastest friends of the Union, and bravest 
defenders of the soil. They have ever been such, and 
during the last few years, when even statesmen, not of 
their religion, were ready to follow the foreign dema- 
gogue, the Catholics have exhibited evidences of self- 
control, of calm and wise loyalty, of a well-poised self- 
possession, which have entitled them to the respect of 
their countrymen. If it be true then, that from the 
earliest colonization of these States, and through all the 
struggles which they had to undergo, in peace and in 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 311 

war, the Catholics have ever sustained an untarnished 
reputation — have never furnished a coward on a battle- 
field, or a traitor in council, ° why should 
they now be given over to the coarse and vulgar denun- 
ciations of the reverend orators who figured on that 
occasion ?" 

It were a sufficient reply to state the fact, that 
instead of denunciations being heaped upon them, Dr. 
Bethune, the "reverend orator" who devoted the most 
attention to the Eomish church, said : " If I know my 
own heart, if this were a case of religious oppression 
of a Jew or a Turk, much more the oppression of a 
Roman Catholic, whom I yet hold to be a fellow- 
Christiax, I say my indignation would be as great as 
it is now." This does not look like denunciation — there 
is nothing in the language used, nor in the spirit of 
the meeting, that looks like it. It is a miserable sub- 
terfuge, under which to bring out the old cry of danger 
from Catholic valor, and of their adherence to the 
Union — an antagonism which is ridiculous. For if 
Catholics are such unselfish adherents to the Union, 
there is no danger to be apprehended, from either an 
invasion, or internal strife, so far as they are concerned. 
The question naturally arises here : Have Catholics, as 
Catholics, fought for the United States ? 

It were simply absurd to enter into an argument to 
prove that Catholics were, are, and must forever be 
opposed to religious freedom. Look at Italy to-day. 
Catholicism rules supreme — but where is freedom? 
The imprisoned in her dungeons — the persecuted of 
Florence, and the oppressed in Europe reply: " Nat in 
Rome, nor where the priest rules supreme." 



312 



THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 



There is a narrow street in Eome, with a gate at 
each end, into which is crammed every night a great 
number of human beings. " Drive through that street 
in the daytime, and you need perfume to keep you from 
fainting, such is the consequence of this dense popula- 
tion. Who are these people ? They are almost under 
the shadow of the Vatican. And this most Christian 
sovereign of the most Christian church, has the power 
to set them free ; but he closes the gates upon them at 
eight o'clock every evening in the winter, and nine 
o'clock in the summer, and opens them in the morning 
at a corresponding hour. Why is this ? Because they 
are Jews, and the Koman Catholic religion tolerates no 
religion but its own." 

If there be a city, next to Jerusalem itself, filled 
with consecrated recollections, it is Eome — Eome, whose 
grounds are honey-combed with the tombs of early 
martyrs. A little while since, when there was danger, 
what did yon see ? A sovereign prince, the represent- 
ative of the Apostles, puts on a livery, gets behind 
a traveling carriage, and flies like a lackey ! The 
coward fled ! And he whose voice of authority had 
roared like a bull from the Vatican, roared from the 
shores of Mala di Gseta, like a paddocked calf ! 

Go all over Catholic Europe, and see if Popery does 
not find the sheet-anchor of her hope in the points of 
bayonets, and the thrones of despotism ! These uphold 
her power. Take them away, and the harlot of the seven 
hills bites the dust. Penn, in the House of Commons, 
predicted, a century before the Eevolution, " that the 
Catholics would join their forces and sympathies in oppos- 
ing England." This they did, not as freemen, but as 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 313 

Catholics. Why was this ? Simply, because England 
had demolished the citadel of her strength, and had 
banished the Papal hierarchy from her dominions. Years 
prior to the American Revolution, the Catholic powers on 
the Continent, had formed an alliance, and unitedly had 
arrayed themselves against Prussia and England. Cath- 
olics then, in siding with a few Protestant Republicans, 
who had risen to protect their homes, were not doing this 
because of their love of Protestantism or freedom ; they 
did it to oppose their old enemy, England — a3 the far- 
seeing Penn predicted. It was not Popery and freedom 
against despotism, but Catholicism, as usual, against 
Protestantism, and opposing England because of her 
Protestant proclivities. 

Bishop Hughes has shown, that Catholics in Ireland, 
on the Continent, in America, fought England. We see 
the reason. France disliked England because she had 
beaten France on the tented field, on the sea, and in the 
council chamber. The Pope disliked England because 
she had destroyed his power in the Indies, under Clive. 
Ireland, because she had inherited a life-long hatred — a 
hatred which is bequeathed from sire to son. And out 
of this private quarrel between England and Popery, 
Mr. Hughes would cull flowers from which he has tried 
to weave one of freedom's chaplets. that he may bind 
about his brow, as an inheritor of Catholic glory and 
patriotism. 

Grant then, that Catholics did share the dangers and 
toils of the battle-field. Did they go as Catholics, or 
lovers of freedom ? If as Catholics, then selfishness 
prompted them, and there is no ground for boasting. 
If as freemen, then it may be shown tbey aoted in 
27 



314 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

self-defense, and for self-interest, in joining their forces 
with a stronger power to repel a common foe. 

Bat we would not think so meanly of our Catholic 
fellow-citizens, as to suppose them incapable of battling 
for freedom, for its sake alone. Not because they were 
Catholics did they fight, but because of freedom, which 
the intelligent among them loved. It were well, if 
Catholics would throw off the manacles of a church, 
which not only claims entire control of conscience, but of 
their valor. Let us not smother and cloak beneath the 
name of Catholic, that suppressed groan, and struggle to 
be free, which has so often characterized her uprising 
millions in Ireland, Italy, and Europe. It is this love 
of freedom which gave Luther power over the masses in 
Germany, and Gavazzi over the Italians, at a later day, 
in Europe. 

We propose to show now, whatever they fought for, it 
was not for the church. Take the Mexican war. That 
is close at hand. All know about it. Of the large 
number who enlisted in the last war, most did so more 
from poverty than from any other cause. A home and 
a certain amount of money were promised them. These 
they were in need of, and for these they were willing to 
risk danger, life, and fatigue. 

Again — the unity and individuality of Catholic inter- 
ests is claimed by Archbishop Hughes, as a distinguish- 
ing characteristic. Now, if Catholics throughout the 
world be so united — if a common tie belts them together 
— if their interests in Austria — beneath the shadow of 
the Vatican — by the rivers of Canada — and upon the 
savannas of America, be common, and if they are only 
willing to fight in support of them, we surely would not 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 315 

expect to find the Catholics of a Protestant country, as 
Catholics, enlisting in our American army, and rallying 
around a Protestant flag to do battle with the Catholics 
of Mexico. If then, Catholics are so united, that Prot- 
estant England could not obtain either faithful Irish or 
German Catholics to shoulder arms and march against 
America, can it be that the church of Rome, changeless 
in her policy and in her practice, has so soon, without 
any good reason, turned the arms of her faithful sons 
against their brother Catholics, and bid them join the 
Protestant army that goes to subvert the power of that 
nation whose faith is Catholic, whose institutions are all 
Catholic, whose armies are Catholic worshipers, and 
whose leaders are the loyal sons of the church ? Every 
man of common sense will answer, Xo ! We are com- 
pelled to seek reasons for this course, outside of the 
Roman Catholic church. The Catholics of America have 
just cause to be indignant at the impudent assumption. 

Braver and truer men never shouldered the musket, 
than these very Irish and German soldiers. Not because 
they are members of the Roman Catholic church, but 
from an inherent love of freedom which has settled, and 
grown strong in the heart, until that love has overleaped 
every barrier, broken every fetter, and made men of 
them. For long weary years they struggled to win 
this freedom for the land of their birth. A glorious 
ancestry had done battle for freedom in vain. They 
crossed the waters to join the liberty-loving legions of 
America, where homes can be earned, and where all 
may worship God beneath their " own vine and fig-tree, 
with none to molest or make them afraid." Enjoying 
these blessings, and knowing their inestimable value, 



316 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

they are prepared to defend them, not as Catholics, but 
as freedom-loving Americans. How would a Yankee, or 
a Green mountain boy feel, to be told that his fathers 
fought because they were Protestants. He would reply — 
They fought as freeman. 

The threat so often made that Catholics are prepared 
to rise and re-enact the bloody tragedy of Europe, is 
mere nonsense. Whatever might have been their de- 
sires, the lessons they have recently learned, will show 
them that it is not safe to follow the lead of their 
priesthood. For Americans, though willing to welcome 
to their shores the persecuted exiles of Europe, will 
not yield up their right to dominion over the land 
they have watered with their blood. But we do not 
believe the Catholics are willing to trample into the 
dust our God-given liberties. The priesthood may 
desire to carry out the threat, that " if Catholics ever 
become the 'majority, freedom is at an end ; ,? but, with 
the masses, whose hearts are warmed by the sunlight 
of truth, and whose minds are disciplined and enlarged 
by the free thoughts that circulate so widely — we are 
assured that their interests lie in another direction, if 
the time ever comes when the banner of freedom shall 
be endangered, or the Constitution, around which so 
many cluster with beating hearts and high hopes, shall 
be treated with disrespect — that the intelligent of the 
Catholic faith will side with the lovers of the right and 
true, and be found as valiant as ever in the fight. 

The second position to which we will devote attention, 
is the claim that Catholics love to circulate the Bible. 
About it Bishop Hughes said : " The impression in- 
tended to be made by the speakers on that occasion, was 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 317 

that the Government of Tuscany, the Jesuits, the Pope, 
and the members of the Catholic church throughout 
the world have a mortal dread of the Bible. This 
would be strange indeed. To them the book, the New 
Testament at least, was originally given in manuscript 
by its inspired authors. They have been its witnesses 
and its guardians from the beginning. It has been 
recognized and used by them as, in so far as it goes, 
a duplicate on parchment of the doctrines which our 
Saviour had inscribed with a pencil of Divine fire, in 
characters of living faith, on the heart of the Church. 
The art of printing facilitated its diffusion, and the 
Church availed herself with eagerness of that art, for 
the purpose of multiplying copies of the Holy Scrip- 
tures. jSumerous editions of the Bible were published 
in the principal languages of Europe, under the patron- 
age of popes, cardinals, and bishops, long before Pro- 
testantism came into being. The Italians were well 
acquainted with the Bible in their own beautiful lan- 
guage, before Martin Luther was born. The first Italian 
edition was published in Venice, in the year 1471, and 
forty successive editions were published in the different 
cities of Italy anterior to the date of the Protestant 
translation, which was published, not in Italy, but in 
Geneva, in the year 1562. In the very year of our 
American independence, the Archbishop of Florence 
brought out another translation, for which he received 
the special thanks of Pope Pius VI. In our own coun- 
try, the Catholics have published not less than twenty 
or twenty-five editions of the Holy Scriptures, of every 
size from the folio down to the octavo, many of which 
are stereotyped. Is it not surprising then, that our 



818 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

Protestant neighbors will persist in supposing that we 
are afraid of our own original and hereditary documents 
that have never been out of our possession ? " 

It has been said with great propriety, that this claim 
to antiquity as a church, and to have received the ori- 
ginal manuscripts of the New Testament from the 
hands of their inspired authors, is ridiculous enough, 
as authentic history assures us that your church had no 
existence till after the lapse of centuries from the 
times of the Apostles. 

" It did not rise till the spirit of Anti-Christ, which 
began to discover itself while the Apostles were present, 
had had time, through apostacies and various corrup- 
tions of the doctrines and institutions of Christianity, 
to furnish the materials and an opportunity for its form- 
ation. Then it rose, in an organized form, but it was 
too late by several hundreds of years, to receive any- 
thing from the hands of divinely inspired authors." 

The statement that various editions of the Bible had 
been published by the Catholic church, is well enough 
so far as it goes. The fact, however, which is sup- 
pressed, is all important. The Bibles published by the 
Romish church were restricted to a narrow circulation, 
by the enormous prices at which they were held ; be- 
sides, no one was allowed to have them, unless they 
could obtain from the Catholic priest a written permis? 
sion to that effect. 

That it is not surprising that the orators of Metro- 
politan Hall, intended to make the impression that all 
from the Pope down to the priest, had or have a mortal 
dread of the Bible, is clear from the fact, that Kirwan 
proclaimed just what every one knows to be fact — a 



FN AMERICAN HISTORY. 319 

fact which history with her thousand tongues proclaims, 
the monuments of which may be found in the bulls of 
Popes, in the Inquisition, and stamped as by the fiat 
of Omnipotence upon the memories of burning martyrs 
and wandering exiles — a fact declared by the canon 
law ; according to which the whole world is the Pope's 
great game park, where he is permitted to hunt and 
shoot and do with us as he pleases. The Pope is deter- 
mined that not a Bible shall pass over the Alp3, and 
that eternal darkness shall enshroud Italy. Do we 
need proof? Let us seek it first in the bull of Pius IX., 
given the 8th of November, 1840. Of Bible societies, 
he says : " This is the design and tendency of these 
insidious Bible societies, which, renewing the crafts of 
the ancient heretics, cease not to obtrude on all kinds 
of men, even the least instructed, gratuitously and at 
immense expense, copies in vast numbers of the books 
of the Sacred Scriptures, translated, against the holiest 
rules of the church, into various vulgar tongues, and 
very often with the most perverse and erroneous inter- 
pretations ; to the end that divine tradition, the doctrine 
of the Fathers, and the authority of the Catholic 
church being rejected, every man may interpret the Rev- 
elations of the Almighty according to his own private 
judgment, and, perverting their sense, fall into the 
most dangerous errors ; these societies, which, emulous 
of his predecessor, Gregory XVI. reproved by his Apos- 
tolic letter — we desire equally to condemn." 

Pius IX. not only condemns the Bible, but books in 
general, and the license of thinking, speaking and 
writing, and devotes to eternal destruction all heretics, 
including even Protestant admirers. History estab- 



320 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

lishes the opposition of Koman Catholics to the Bible. 
Within the last thirty years bulls have frequently been 
issued condemning Bible societies and the free circula- 
tion of the sacred Scriptures in the vulgar tongue. 
Pius VII. issued one in 1816, Leo XII. in 1824, Pius 
VIII. in 1829, Gregory XVI. issued two, one in 1832 
and one in 1844, in which, after denouncing Bible soci- 
eties, he adds: "Watch attentively over those who are 
appointed to expound the Holy Scriptures, that they 
dare not, under any pretext whatever, interpret or ex- 
plain the holy pages contrary to the tradition of the 
Holy Fathers and to the service of the Holy Catholic 
Church." 

The assertion, that "numerous editions of the Bible 
were published in the principal languages of Europe, 
under the patronage of popes, cardinals and bishops, 
long before Protestantism came into being," finds a 
complete refutation in the following language, found in 
Hall's Encyclopedia, from the pen of the distinguished 
Biblical scholar, Gesenius. "After the popular languages 
of modern Europe had become formed, discerning men 
soon saw that the translation of the Bible into these 
tongues, and the circulation of it in a form thus made 
intelligible to all, was the most appropriate and natural 
means for diffusing a pure religious knowledge among 
the people ; for the Latin having become a dead lan- 
guage, the Vulgate was now a sealed book for the 
people, and even for a large portion of the clergy. But 
the dominant church was not insensible of the danger 
which threatened her, in case her system of doctrine 
should be subjected by the laity to the test of compari- 
son with its source ; and accordingly prohibitions were 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 321 

issued by popes and councils against the translation of 
the Bible into these different languages. 

11 It was among the Waldenses, toward the end of 
the 12th century, that the desire for reading the Holy 
Scriptures led to the translation of the Gospels, the 
Epistles of Paul, the Psalms, Job and some other books 
of the Old Testament into the French, or Lingua Ro- 
mana. Wherefore, Pope Innocent III. caused these 
translations to be prohibited in the year 111)9, and in 
1200 to be seized aud burnt. Such prohibitions of the 
Bible were afterward from time to time repeated. 

"James I., of Arragon, who died in 127G, issued the 
ordinance, that every one whether priest or layman, 
who had in his possession the books of the Old and New 
Testament, and did not deliver them up to the Bishop 
of the place to be burnt, should be regarded as a heretic. 
Similar ordinances were issued when Wicklitfe, soon 
after, rendered the same service to England. At a 
later period, the Council of Trent, in the same spirit, 
declared the Vulgate to be the only authentic church 
version. The famous Papal bull, of 1713, in opposition 
to the Jansenists, who favored the reading of the Bible, 
condemned as heretical the sentiment — 'Lectio Scriptu- 
rce sac rce est pro omnibus,' ( 4 The reading of the Bible is 
for all/) M In the same spirit, at the present day, we 
have seen the Papal See carrying on a crusade against 
Bibles and Bible societies, while every colporteur re- 
ports innumerable instances where the Bible is refused 
by the laity of the Eomish church, because of the op- 
position and teachings of the priests. " It was hardly 
natural," continues Gesenius, " that so unnatural a pro- 



322 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

hibition should be consistently carried out. Hence, as 
well before the Eeformation as after, translations of the 
Bible were made, even in Catholic countries, in the 
common language of the people, but without gaining 
any considerable circulation, and of course without ex- 
erting any essential influence on the formation of the 
popular mind. These translations were chiefly made 
from the Vulgate," 

It is in such expressive facts that history proclaims 
the dread which the Papacy has of the Bible. It is 
their policy to keep the ignorant masses blinded. They 
will not allow the clear sunlight of truth to fall upon 
their understandings, lest, seeing the light, they should 
walk in it as followers of the High and Holy One, in 
preference to treading the darkened path of the church 
of Eome, leading ever away to the blinding mists and 
vapors of a gross sensualism and a gloomy unbelief. 

There is one feature more in this letter, which de- 
serves notice. In speaking of the conscience, he says : 
" It is hardly necessary for me to observe that freedom 
of conscience, which is here contended for, is inviolable 
in its very nature and essence. To say that any man, 
or any nation, has power to destroy freedom of con- 
science, is to give utterance to a potent absurdity. 
Conscience without freedom is not conscience, but for 
this very reason the freedom of conscience is beyond 
the reach of man's power. God has provided in the 
human soul a fortress to which it' can retreat, and from 
which it can hurl defiance against all intruders." 

We rejoice that this great truth has at last found it3 
way to the darkened understanding. If this be true, 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 323 

why should Popery persecute. This is an old truth. It 
was first proclaimed to the world at the base of Calvary, 
when the Saviour of mankind sent out his disciples, and 
made them the fountains of an influence, whose peren- 
nial streams have made the waste places of the earth to 
blossom as the rose. The Apostles, some upon the cross, 
some in exile, and others in prison, repeated the same 
glorious truth. Luther, at the Diet of Worms, thundered 
it forth, with a trumpet-tone that shook to its very base 
the rickety fabric of Romanism. A Huss, a Latimer, a 
Ridley, repeat it, and dwell with rapture on the cheering 
assurance it affords. It was the pillar of cloud by day, 
and flame by night, that soothed the wandering Wal- 
denses, as driven from their homes they were scattered 
over earth, pilgrims and sojourners for conscience sake. 
It drove our pilgrim fathers from their England home, 
and made heaven vocal with their songs of praise, as, 
upon the rock-bound coast of New England, they thanked 
their God for freedom of action, as well as of conscience ; 
and it is the same sad strain which every breeze so 
mournfully bears across the sea, which tells us all with 
mournful truthfulness, that however apparent may be 
the futility of persecution for conscience sake — that 
though " God has provided in the human soul a fortress 
to which it can retreat, and from which it can hurl defi- 
ance against all invaders M — and though this truth, so 
sublime in its teachings, has found its way to a Roman 
heart, cased in steel — it tells us that Papacy dare not 
allow the devout worshiper of Christ to enjoy that exter- 
nal liberty of action which is according to conscience. 
Alas, how true it is, that the Romanist has no freedom 



324 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

of conscience. The Christian alone enjoys it. He alone 
is permitted to enter the great temple of God's truth, 
that he may hear and heed its voice — with the Roman- 
ist the doors have been barricaded by formulas and 
restraints, till the poor Catholic has no fortress, no strong- 
hold. For just so soon as a free thought begins to stir 
the fibers of his brain, or run along the delicate strings 
of his heart, a plaintive sadness steals over the expres- 
sion of his eye as it meets the canons, bulls, and restric- 
tions of the church. This is not, we rejoice to say, the 
condition of all. Some there are, of strength enough to 
gather their chains about them, and walk erect as men — 
but this power is confined to a few. The fear of inj uring the 
church fetters the mind ; the pall of ignorance enshrouds 
the heart with the habiliments of a moral death, and the 
canons of the church bind the conscience to a dead carcass 
which has to be borne forever. 

Catholicism is a chain that tries to bind all to a com- 
mon cause. It allows none freedom of conscience or 
independence of thought, from the Pope to the veriest 
peasant that sits by the church begging his pittance of 
support. Catholicism is in its dotage ; in the language 
of another, " It thinks, acts, and breathes, in a foreign 
country, on a soil recently sprinkled with the blood of 
the Italian people, for its destruction, and the slavery 
of mankind. Catholicism, with the Pope at its head, 
the Jesuits on the right, the clergy on the left, Austria 
and Russia at the base, is but a dismantled vessel, beaten 
by all winds, ready to break and sink at the first storm. 
Was it not for the protecting points of bayonets, lent to 
the Pope by the despots of Europe, the Catholic ship 



Cs T AMERICAN HISTORY. 325 

would already be wrecked on the shore of Italian repub- 
licanism.'* In other words, destroy the basis on which 
Catholicism now stands, and the head, and the right and 
left wing, and body and soul, frame and masonry, will 
crumble down ; for Jesuitism has already aimed at itself 
a fatal blow. Its movements are but the nervous con- 
tractions of a dead body, whose effects are borrowed from 
the region of storms, not from the bright, pure light of 
Heaven. 



326 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 



CHAPTEK XIV. 

APPEALS OF EUROPEAN REPUBLICANS AND 
DESPOTS TO OUR SYMPATHIES. 

Louis Kossuth — His reception by the American people — The doctrine 
of Non-intervention maintained by Millard Fillmore and defended 
by Henry Clay — The influence of Kossuth upon the German popu- 
lation in the United States — Gavazzi and Bedini — Their influence. 

The years 1851 and ? 5 2, were fraught with events 
which shook the foundations of the Bepublic, conspicuous 
among which was the arrival of Louis Kossuth, ex-Gov- 
ernor of Hungary, in December, 1851. 

We have already traced the record of French influ- 
ence, and noticed the course of Genet, the emissary of a 
foreign Court. We have seen Washington and Hamil- 
ton battling for American interests, and defending the 
doctrine of non-intervention. We have seen the cunning 
craft of Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe, which secured 
for the Democratic party the support of adopted citizens. 
It was reserved for Millard Fillmore to defend this line 
of policy when. the triumphant entry of Louis Kossuth 
was made into New York, on the 4th of December, 1851, 
and into Washington on the 30th of the same month. 
The ex-Governor of Hungary was everywhere greeted 
with popular demonstrations which only found a parallel 
in the career of Genet. Kossuth had sprung like a 
meteor into the political firmament. His antecedents 
were popular, and his name resounded over the world as 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 327 

the symbol and type of Republican principles in Europe. 
The manner in which he acquired our language and his- 
tory, and the use he made of the same, enabled him to 
sweep the heart-strings of humanity with the touch of a 
master. The object of his mission he avowed at the 
outset. He desired to induce the United States to inter- 
fere in the affairs of Europe, just as did Genet — the one 
plead for Hungary, and the other, as all will remember, 
desired assistance for France. Kossuth asked at the 
hands of the American people : '* 1st. A declaration, con- 
jointly with England, against the interference of Russia 
in the affairs of Hungary. 2d. A declaration that the 
United States will maintain commerce with European 
nations, whether they are in a state of revolution or not. 
3d. That the people would recognize Hungary as an 
independent nation." 

His position resembled that of Genet, and in many 
points the career of the ex-Governor of Hungary, 
presented a striking resemblance to the career of the 
emissary of the French. Both plead for fatherland — 
both tried fair means at the outset — both were received 
with acclamations on the part of the people. Washing- 
ton received Genet with becoming respect, but clung to 
the interests of the country with an iron grasp. Fortu- 
nately for the country, Millard Fillmore proved himself 
in this crisis worthy of his position. To the insinuating 
words of Kossuth, spoken in the executive mansion, 
December 31st, 1851. he replied very briefly, saying that 
the policy of this country had long been settled, and 
that his sentiments had been freely expressed in his 
message ; to that policy he had resolved to adhere. 

At that point the reaction commenced. Millard 



328 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

Fillmore, while he had sympathized with down-trodden 
Hungary, felt that the policy inaugurated by Washing- 
ton forbade foreign interference. The transition of 
public sentiment which followed was terrible. Kossuth 
saw his cloud-capped castle crumbling. Fancy and 
sympathy had built it. Up it went, above policy and 
interest and justice. At length the wand of truth was 
stretched forth. Principles long since forgotten by the 
masses were enunciated, and the tide began again to 
turn. On the 7th of January, 1852, Kossuth was for- 
mally invited into both houses of Congress. In the 
evening he was present at a public dinner given him by 
a large number of members of Congress, where he again 
spoke, expressing the hope that they, the Senators and 
legislators, would " feel induced to pronounce in time 
their vote about the law of international justice." Said 
he: "I know, and Europe knows, the immense weight 
of such a pronunciation from such a place. But never 
had I the impious wish to try to entangle this great 
republic in difficulties inconsistent with its own welfare, 
its own security, its own interest." 

Daniel Webster made a long and eloquent speech, 
expressing his appreciation of Kossuth, and declaring 
his belief that Hungary was fitted for self-government. 
He said he would not enter into a discussion of the prin- 
ciples involved in this question, but referred to his 
speech upon the Greek Revolution, in 1823, where he 
took the position that it was proper to appoint an agent 
or commissioner, whose mission would be one of inquiry 
and information, and " to avail ourselves of the inter- 
esting occasion of the Greek Revolution to make our 
protest against the doctrine (of intervention in the 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 329 

affairs of other nations) of the Allied P w . both as 
they are laid down in principle and are applied in prac- 
tice/' Mr. Webster went no further. It was a doctrine 
of the founders of the Republic, to recognize existing 
governments, but never to interfere in their manage- 
ment. While it is always proper to express a sympathy 
for those struggling to be free, yet it is perilous to go 
further. Had Europe acted on this principle, the nation- 
alities of Poland and Hungary and Italy would now 
have an existence. This doctrine of foreign interference 
carried our by Russia, enabled Austria t:> plant the heel 
of despotism on the neck of the brave Magyars — carried 
out by France, drove Mazzini from Italy. Shall we 
peril our own interests to advance those of a nation 
lying beyond the ocean ? " For the sake of my country." 
said Henry Clay to Kossuth, just prior to his death, 
11 you must allow me to protest against the policy you 
propose to her." Webster was willing to express sym- 
pathy for Hungary, and would have given the Pwepublic, 
once established, a cordial recognition. But Kossuth 
said mere sympathy would not advance his purposes 
and Hungary's interests. He required material aid. 
Party lines were drawn again. Webster. Fillmore and 
Clay stood on one side — how much they remind us of 
Hamilton, Washington and Adams ! Hon. Lewis Cass, 
Douglass, and others, opposed the policy. Gen. Cass 
at the banquet avowed his full and most cordial assent 
to the doctrine that M The United States ought to inter- 
fere to prevent Russian intervention against the inde- 
pendence of Hungary.' 7 But all failed to satisfy the 
demands of Kossuth. He then resorted to the plan of 
issuing bonds, to be redeemed on the success of Hungary. 
28 



380 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

and raised a large amount of M material aid." After 
this lie resorted to other measures, which lost him the 
respect of the American people, and resulted in his 
departure from America, under a guise far different 
from that under which he came. Though he had avowed 
his determination to deal fairly with the United States, 
yet on the 14th of June, 1852, we find him again in 
New York, instigating the German population to deeds 
which should have flushed his cheek with shame. What 
he failed to accomplish in an honorable way, he tried 
to achieve by a course which has branded his name with 
eternal infamy. As will have been seen, Gen. Cass 
and the Democratic leaders sided with Kossuth, in 1852, 
as did their leaders, Jefferson and Monroe, in 1798, 
with Genet. As early as February, 1852, Kossuth 
addressed the Germans, in Louisville, Ky., and urged 
them by their votes to compel the government of the 
United States to adopt his scheme of intervention. On 
the 12th of June, 1852, he said to them in New York: 
11 You are strong enough to effect the election of that 
candidate for the Presidency, who gives the most atten- 
tion to the European cause." On the 23d of June, he 
again addressed the Germans at the Broadway Taber- 
nacle, on the same subject, and when the address was 
ended, the meeting adopted the following incendiary 
resolutions : 

" Whereas, the Whig party, in their platform recently 
adopted in Baltimore, & ° have declared themselves 
against participating in the fate of Europe ; and whereas, 
furthermore, the Democratic party in America, which, 
at least in their fundamental principles, cherish pro 
gress, have not declared themselves against partaking 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 331 

<»f the European struggle for liberty, and the policy 
of intervention may be expected to be adopted by the 
Democratic party, as well as by their candidate, there- 
fore, 

11 Resolved, that as American citizens, we will attach 
ourselves to the Democratic party, and will devote our 
strength to having a policy of intervention, in America, 
carried out." 

This secured the German vote for Franklin Pierce. 
The Irish vote was secured in another way. In all this 
history, we can see the treachery and deceit practiced 
upon the foreign-born citizens of the Republic by heart- 
less domain >irues. Hungary was left an befriended — 
the letter of Kossuth, addressed to the President, was 
treated with contempt. The German-Irish citizens 
have been led to support a policy antagonistic to their 
best interests. Should the Republic of the United 
States interfere in the internal strife of nations on the 
continent of Europe, such a course would justify them 
in abandoning the terms of forbearance and non-inter- 
ference which they have hitherto preserved toward us. 
Said Henry Clay to Kcssuth : " By the policy to which 
we have adhered since the days of Washington, we have 
prospered beyond precedent ; we have done more for 
the cause of liberty in the world, than arms could effect. 
But if we should involve ourselves in the tangled web 
of European politics, in a war in which we could effect 
nothing — and if, in that struggle, Hungary should go 
down and we should go down with her — where then 
would be the last hope of the friends of freedom 
throughout the world? Far better is it for ourselves, 
for Hungary, and for the cause of liberty, that, adher- 



332 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

ing to our wise, pacific system, and avoiding the distant 
wars of Europe, we should keep our lamp burning 
brightly on this Western shore as a light to all nations, 
than to hazard its utter extinction among the ruins of 
fallen or falling republics in Europe. ?; 

The words of the dying patriot foun3 an echo in 
every true American heart. Before the stern truth, 
the Hungarian hero quailed. He then discovered his 
mistake, and found that it was possible for American- 
born citizens to know as much regarding the spirit and 
genius of the Constitution of the country, and be as well 
prepared to appreciate and understand and explain the 
teachings of Washington, as for those whose studies 
had been confined to other subjects alike foreign to our 
history and our aspirations. Kossuth departed in ob- 
scurity, and it is said under an assumed name. If so, 
while his approach was glorious, his sojourn was sedi- 
tious, and the sequel of his career is full of mortifying 
records, which must embitter the evening of a life onco 
so full of promise and of hope. 

Gavazzi next attracted our attention. About the 
middle of March, 1853, Alexandro Gavazzi, the distin- 
guished Italian orator and ex-priest of Eome, arrived 
in New York. Kossuth had returned to London — the 
fires of revolution were extinguished, and in their 
stead were imprisonment, the inquisition, and Bible 
burnings. It is a curious fact, and one which can not 
be too highly appreciated, that the overthrow of free- 
dom in Italy and the re-establishment of the Papal 
authority in Rome, did in the providence of God, result 
in the overthrow of the Papal power in the United 
States. Persecution drove the most eminent advocates 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 333 

of liberty and equality in Europe to foreign lands. 
This fact gave Mazzini's eloquent pen to England, and 
the flaming speech of Gavazzi to the Western world. 
The way for bis favorable reception had been prepared 
by a commendatory epistle directed to the Evangelical 
ministers of New York, signed by the Protestant clergy 
of Dublin. His fame as an orator preceded him, and 
on his arrival, the main facts of his life were heralded 
by the press ; and his history, so full of interest and 
stirring scenes of adventure, became widely known. 
Born in 1809, at the age of sixteen entering the order 
of St. Barnabas, he rapidly rose to distinction as a 
professor of rhetoric at Naples; and after the accession 
of Pius IX., he found opportunity for the promulgation 
of those liberal views which here distinguished him and 
his illustrious brother in the order, UggO B;i 

In time, however, his fame as an orator rendered the 
position of the Pope untenable. The revolution of 
1848 broke out, and Gavazzi's eloquence supplied 
ammunition, clothing and provisions, houses, and all 
the materials de guerre from a willing population. He 
was the hermit Peter of the crusade. When defeat 
attended their efforts, aided by Mr. Freeman, our Yice- 
Consul in Home, he escaped to London, where he lived 
in retirement, earning his livelihood by giving daily 
instructions in the language of his beloved Italy; until 
a few of his fellow exiles, anxious to hear once more his 
eloquent voice, clubbed together the pittance of poverty 
to hire a room for the purpose, and the result has been 
the potent blast of indignant oratory, and the trumpet 
note of withering denunciation with which he ha9 
aspailed the Roman Court. 



334 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

From the day of his arrival in the United States, he 
attracted universal attention. He exposed Popery, root 
and branch. In Canada, he found Romanism as he had 
seen it in the old world. While in Quebec, he charged 
the Irish clergy with maintaining the Ribbon system. 
This excited the animosity of the Catholics of Montreal, 
whither he went. The Orange lodges saw hostile de- 
monstrations made by Irish Catholics, and prepared to 
defend the eloquent Padre. On his arrival, a large 
concourse received him. In the evening, the audience 
came prepared for difficulty. The lecturer was warmly 
received. He launched out in praise of liberty, and in 
denunciation of despotism. When his speech was fin- 
ished, though comparative quiet had been maintained 
during its delivery, a crowd rushed into the church. 
Gavazzi proved not only brave in denunciation, but 
fearless in action. His pulpit became his citadel, and 
with a chair he defended himself against the combined 
attack, aided by his secretary Paoli, and an artillery 
sergeant. At length dragged from the pulpit, he 
fell prostrate upon the mass, and said that he thought 
many would remember this passage of the Italian lec- 
turer. Rushing for the basement, his way was blocked 
up by an immense force. This he scattered, and suc- 
ceeded in getting out without serious injury. 

Gavazzi was no longer a foreigner to us. He had 
become one of the defenders of freedom of speech. The 
Catholic press of New York said : " We say further, 
that any man who should willingly hear the Italian 
booby make use of such language, and not forthwith 
break his mouth, must be possessed of very little of 
that pardonable exuberance of irrascible mettle, that 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 535 

distinguishes the man of honor from the sneak. '' Such 
language produced the desired effect. The American 
press spoke out for freedom. Gavazzi made a home in 
the American heart, for the feelings engendered and 
sentiments expressed at Metropolitan Hall. In con- 
nection with these two facts, a third followed, which 
seemed to establish forever the character of Eomanism 
in the minds of Americans. For what the riots in 
Canada — the abuse of the Protestant spirit by the 
Catholic press — the attack on free schools — left undone, 
was accomplished by the advent to our shores of Goe- 
tand Bedini, the Pope's Nuncio to Brazil, who came in 
the summer of 1853, to settle the affairs of the St. 
Louis Church of Buffalo. 

Goetand Bedini was the murderer of Uggo Bassi, and 
as such was heralded to the American people by the 
clarion voice of Gavazzi. His reception was cordial, 
and the largest liberty was allowed. 

With Bishop Hughes he made a tour of the States, 
and one of the government vessels was placed at their 
service. This act of indiscretion excited general re- 
mark. The story of Uggo Bassi's mournful death, a 
compatriot of Gavazzi, of the same age and order, be- 
gan to circulate, filling all with horror and indignation. 
The murderer became a marked man. Gavazzi said of 
Bassi : " He was a man of the most varied acquire- 
ments. Gifted by God and nature with a beautiful 
form, nobly endowed in mind, he was a good musician, 
one of the best modern poets of Italy, and as a pulpit 
orator he took foremost rank. He followed the for- 
tunes of the national army, was wounded in battle, and 



536 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

was everywhere wUh the legions of the hero Garribaldi, 
one of the bravest of the defenders of Rome. He 
was captured on board a vessel, together with his com- 
patriot Garribaldi, and his wife, and a small band of 
soldiers, by the minions of Austria, and executed by 
order of Bedini, Governor of the provinces in which he 
was captured." In his speech at New York, he de- 
scribed, in thrilling terms, the affecting incidents of 
Bassi's execution, by order of M. Bedini. "Even the 
Austrian officer commanding the platoon whose murder- 
ous fire was destined to end the sufferings of the martyr 
patriot, shed tears on the solemn occasion. The last 
w r ords of Uggo Bassi were : * I am innocent — Christ and 
Italy P Who signed the death-warrant of the patriot, 
Bassi? Who, still further to degrade the martyr, 
caused the skin to be cut from his hands, forehead and 
head, to * disconsecrate' him ? Who refused to let his 
body be buried in the cemetery, and caused it to be in- 
terred in the burial place of assassins? The Arch- 
bishop of Thebes, M, Bedini, the Papal Nuncio to this 
country, and who, through the blindness of the people 
of the United States of the true object of his mission, 
is endeavoring to pave the way for the introduction 
of a legion of Jesuits here, to subvert the liberties 
of the country, as the legions of blood-thirsty Austria 
trampled our nascent liberties to the dust." 

The story told with terrible effect on the minds of 
the people, and they everywhere believed the words of 
Gavazzi, when he said: "If Bedini murdered the 
patriot Bassi, in Italy, his coming into a republican 
country does not change his character, or mind ; and the 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 337 

direct tendency of his operations will be the ultimate 
subversion of American liberties by the extensive spread 
of Papacy through the agency of Jesuits." 

On the 22d of October, 1853, the trustees of the St. 
Louis church had an interview with the Nuncio, and 
presented a memorial containing the details of their 
grievances. The reply of the Nuncio, sent to the 
church three days afterward, placed them in the wrong 
and the Bishop in the right. Without noticing the 
question presented to him, or their charter of incorpora- 
tion, he said: " It suffices for me to state that the 
Bishop may lawfully decide and require, and this con- 
gregation, either by mere consent, or by direct and 
immediate action, should conform." Of the laws of the 
State, he says : " I cannot believe that any law of the 
State will prevent your conforming to the discipline of 
the Church." If so, he advises them " To make known 
the case to the legislative body, and they would grant 
such modifications of the law as would place your legal 
position in harmony with the laws of the church to 
which you belong." In this way he hoped to induce 
Catholics to become petitioners for the measures and 
policy dictated at Rome. The cunning of the Jesuit 
was in vain. The reply of the trustees was to the 
point. They said : " We see nothing in your Excellen- 
cy's answer but a repetition of the demand made by the 
Et. Rev. Bishop Timon, that is, "entire submission, and 
that our Act of Incorporation should be annulled, and 
that the appointment of a Committee, instead of a Board 
of Trustees, should be made by him, ivhich has been the 
cause of our difficulties." 

" Up to the time of the beginning of these diffi- 
29 



338 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

culties, we never meddled with the spiritual, leaving it 
entirely to the pastor and bishop, but as to the tempo- 
ralities, we had always the control, subject, neverthe- 
less, to the yearly inspection of the bishop and pastor, 
(and at any time within the fiscal year) over the amount 
expended and received, which the pastor always found 
correct. As to the annulling of our Act of Incorpora- 
tion, there is not the least shadow of thought, as we 
believo that temporalities have nothing to do with 
spiritualities' 

The termination of the difficulty has already been 
given. The congregation petitioned the Legislature for 
redress, and found able defenders in Hon. Messrs. Put- 
nam, Brooks, and others. A bull of excommunication 
was given. Priests were forbidden to administer at the 
altar ; and the rites of sepulture were denied the dead. 
It has been well said, that " the road is no longer around 
a hill than over it." 

The following " rules of administration " were drawn 
up for the refractory church of Buffalo, by the Arch- 
bishop of New York : 

(1.) The Trustees shall be elected from the members 
of the congregation, who are pew-holders of the church ; 
but any member who belongs to any secret society, or 
neglects to observe his Easter confession and communion, 
shall not be so elected. 

(2.) The Trustees shall render an account to the con- 
gregation, every six months, of the moneys received and 
expended by them, and to the Bishop at the end of every 
year. The Bishop reserves the right to examine the 
books of account at any time, at his own option. For 
every amount expended, over three hundred dollars, the 



Ds T AMERICAN HISTORY. 339 

Trustees shall procure the express consent of the Bishop. 

(3.) The Pastor shall attend all Trustee meetings 
ex-ofticio, and if he deems fit to veto any action taken at 
such meetings, and does not afterward withdraw His veto, 
the matter shall be submitted to the Bishop for his 
decision. 

(4.) The Pastor shall appoint the persons who shall 
serve the congregation, or instruct the youth of the con- 
gregation, as organist, sexton, and teacher, but with the 
consent of the Trustees. If the Trustees will not consent 
to the appointment of such person by the Priest, it shall 
be submitted to the decision of the Bishop. The con- 
gregation will remain incorporated under this admin- 
istration, and never can one cent of the funds of the 
congregation be appropriated without their consent, for 
any other purpose than the use of the congregation. 

Thus orders your Chief Shepherd in Christ. 

f John, Bishop. 

The plan is ingeniously concocted, and will be effective 
for the accomplishment of the bishop's purpose. It is 
this, and no more : The bishop controls the priest by 
holding the fear of submission, in terror over his head ; 
and the priest has an unqualified veto upon the action 
of the congregation — his anathemas, and the danger of 
excommunication being constantly before their eyes. 

In respect to Bedini, the fact seems to be, that he was 
sent here to transact certain business for the Church, and 
that he brought with him a letter from the Pope to the 
President. But the letter did riot give him a diplomatic 
character, nor did the reception which the President gave 
him in acknowledgment of it. All M. Bedini's opera- 
tions in this country have been carried on as a private 



340 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

agent of a foreign temporal prince, the head of the Bo- 
man State. His transactions in real estate, and other 
property, have been reported as very heavy, and he is 
represented to have been very exacting in his demands, 
from those with whom he dealt. It is not surprising that 
the Legate, or Nuncio, has become very unpopular, and 
that people are beginning to ask, wherever he goes, or 
is expected to go, what is his authority for seizing upon 
the property and revenues of the Roman Catholic 
churches of the United States? Of course, no foreign 
minister has a right to do any such thing, and the popu- 
lar feeling has now come up to Washington, in the shape 
of a demand that Sr. Bedini shall cease to wander about 
the country, breeding tumult and violence, but shall 
confine himself to his diplomatic functions at the 
capital, if he have any to attend to. 

The Papal Nuncio departed in disguise, and left the 
Republic to be managed by abler men, while he stole 
back to the shadow of the Vatican, where murderers are 
rewarded with place and profit. Revelations of a start- 
ling nature followed his departure. It was proven that 
a bargain was made for the Catholic vote, and that the 
Postal Department was the price paid. The press was 
emancipated. The spirit of 1776 brooded again over 
the land, and impelled the American people to guard 
their rights and liberties from foreign interference, 

A word in regard to a native American priesthood. 
The fact has already been noticed, that years ago, it 
was a project of the Archbishop of New York, aided by 
the Leopold Society, to train and educate native Ameri- 
cans for the priesthood. This scheme worked well for 
a time. But recent developments show, very clearly, 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 341 

that a liberal and educated American priesthood can 
not be relied upon. There is something, so opposed to 
the domination of a foreign power inherent in the 
American breast, that the discipline of the church seems 
incapable of suppressing it altogether. It will not yield 
up entirely, the God-given right of thought and action. 
This principle is apparent in the course panned by the 
American-born priesthood. A foreign bishop can nut 
gain entire control of them. This fact is felt at Rome. 
The result is clearly seen in the project of establishing 
a college for Americans in Rome. 

The Pope in his letter, given at Rome, January 1st, 
1855, says : " But that yon may provide more easily for 
the wants of your dioceses, and may be able to have 
skillful and industrious laborers, who can help you in 
cultivating the vineyard of the Lord — we most earnestly 
wish, as we already have intimated to some of your 
order (who to our common gratification were here in 
Rome on the occasion of our dogmatic definition of the 
Immaculate Conception of the Mother of God), that 
comparing your advice, and uniting your resources, you 
would please to erect in this our fair city of Rome, a 
college appropriated to the clergy of your nation. For 
your wisdom will instruct you how great advantages 
may redound to your dioceses, from an institution of 
that kind. 

" Because, by this arrangement, youth chosen by you, 
and sent hither as the hope of religion, will grow up as 
in a nursery, and imbued here with piety and with an 
excellent education, and drawing from its very foun- 
tain a doctrine incorrupt, and learning the institutes, 
and the rites, and the holy ceremonies of the church 



342 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

which is the Mother and Mistress of all others — when 
they return to their country, will be able perfectly to 
discharge the office of a parish priest, or of a preacher, 
or of a professor ; and to shine as an example of life to 
the people, to instruct the ignorant, and to bring back 
the erring to the paths of truth and justice ; as well as, 
by the armor of sound doctrine, to confound the mad- 
ness and refute the fallacies of men of guile. If you 
will ratify this our desire, which looks into the spirit- 
ual good of those regions, we certainly, as much as lies 
in us, will not omit to assist you with all diligence, that 
you may establish the said college." 

Notice that the main reason for recommending this 
course, is " because youth will grow up as in a nursery." 
Not so in America. The walls of the college are not 
so high but that freedom can overleap them — their 
windows are not so thick but rays of truth may pene- 
trate them ; hence this becomes the nursery of freemen. 

When one contrasts the appearance of the Catholic 
priests, as seen below Montreal, and beyond the reach 
of the influence exerted by our institutions, with those 
around New York, and throughout the United States — 
when one sees the equality of the one, and the absolute 
homage of the other — he is enabled to detect the germ 
of a principle which, strengthened in time, will enable a 
native American priesthood to imitate the example of 
a Henry VIII. when he threw off a foreign yoke, and 
planted the standard of the English church. They will 
not submit to the abhorrent degradation. This fact is 
becoming appreciated and felt, hence the church propo- 
ses to educate her sons at head-quarters, where the 
Bible is not read, and its influence is not seen. For in 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 343 

America the contrast preaches with trumpet-tones 
against the iniquitous abominations of Rome. 

It is almost impossible for an American to conceive 
of the extent of this degradation. Even in Canada, a 
traveler ascending the St. Lawrence, witnessed the fol- 
lowing scene while standing on the deck of the steamer. 
As it approached a landing there stood a procession, 
stretching from the water's edge far up the hill. It 
was composed of the students and priests of a Catholic 
college. It appears that the Bishop of Montreal had 
been attending one of their examinations. The students 
and professors formed two parallel lines, and as the 
bishop passed to the boat, kneeling on either side, they 
touched their faces to the earth. The professors, in 
common with the students, were guilty of this disgust- 
ing servility. The bishop, sitting in the cabin, received 
the homage of a fellow-traveler. A priest, ignorant of 
the whereabouts of the bishop, entered the cabin. As 
soon as he discovered his master he fell upon his knees, 
and there remained until a signal was graciously waved 
to him to approach ; and at length by genuflexions, and 
crawling like a worm before the Most High God, a 
brother man prostrated himself before a libertine whose 
fame is world-wide, for pursuing a course, in the con- 
vent of which Maria Monk was a member, that should 
brand, not only him, but his infamous confederates, 
with eternal shame. 

There is nothing of this in the States. It would not an- 
swer. The attempt has been made to make Americans 
uncover their heads as the host was borne through the 
streets. There will be no more of this. The free spirit 
of Americans will not bow before the graceless thing. 



344 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

It should be remembered that the past history of 
Romanism shows, that whenever it suffers defeat, like 
Uriah Heap — portrayed by Dickens — it declares " I'm 
very humble" But like that monster, by means of its 
humility, it strives to rob the rightful heirs of freedom 
of their heaven-preserved inheritance. Money, genius, 
tact, and energy, coupled with ignorance and supersti- 
tion, are arrayed against a frank and generous people, 
who openly avow. their allegiance to heaven, and their 
love of liberty. 

Rejoicing that the battle is not to the strong, nor the 
race to the swift, and recognizing in our past triumphs 
the hand of a favoring Providence, we repose confidence 
in that Almighty Arm ; and believing that it will con- 
tinue to protect the interests of truth and right, we are 
enabled to behold a brighter future dawning upon the 
earth-born race. 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 34 1 



CHAPTER XV. 

THE OUT-LOOK OF FREEDOM. 

The American movement — Its success and its overthrow — Opposition 
to despotism was the secret of its power — Its alliance with despo- 
tism the source of its weakness. 

Heathen fable relates in fulsome strains, that sud- 
denly a full-armed goddess leaped from the riven brain 
of her progenitor, and astonished the world with her 
deeds of prowess. The teachings of heathen fable were 
more than eclipsed by the unexpected tread of a power 
which, unattended and unheralded, stepped forth into 
the whirl of a busy present, prepared to plan and 
execute gigantic purposes. 

Its origin resembles the boast and prop of Egyptian 
greatness, the wondrous Nile, whose source no man 
knows, while the river, in Egyptian history, is a fact 
underlying its national strength and prosperity. It is 
not different with the American movement. Many have 
sought its origin, and have tired of the seeking. The 
fact, however, is recognized, that at a certain time, a 
new spirit flew over the land, rekindling as it went the 
fires of '76, and springing from the tomb of Washington, 
as Minerva, full-armed, leaped from the brain of the 
bolt-hurling Jove. 

The feeling of opposition awakened against the 
impudent emissary of French Jacobinism, when he 



346 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

appealed to the passions and prejudices of the lawless 
rabble, against the resolution of Washington to shield 
his country from the calamities of a foreign war, has 
been referred to. We have seen the steps taken by 
Jefferson and others to secure the influence of French 
citizens, to the party of which he was the head. Still 
we are not to conclude that Jefferson regarded the 
influence of foreign-born citizens with complacency. 
He saw the dangers to which our country was exposed, 
and in 1781, in his " Notes on Virginia," used the 
following language : 

" They will bring with them the principles of the 
governments they leave, imbibed in early youth ; or, 
if able to throw them off, it will be in exchange for an 
unbounded licentiousness, passing, as is usual, from one 
extreme to the other. It would be a miracle, were 
they to stop precisely at the point of temperate liberty. 
These principles, with their language, they will trans- 
mit to their children. In proportion to their numbers, 
they will share with us the legislation. They will in- 
fuse into it their spirit, warp and bias its directions, and 
render it a heterogenous, incoherent, distracted mass.'* 

While minister to France, in 1788, in a letter to Mr. 
John Jay, he said : " Native citizens, on several valuable 
accounts, are preferable to aliens or citizens alien-born. 
Native citizens possess our language, know our laws, 
customs and commerce, have general acquaintance in 
the United States, give better satisfaction, and are more 
to be relied on in point of fidelity. To avail ourselves 
of native citizens, it appears to me to be advisable to 
declare by standing law, that no person but a native 
citizen shall be capable of the office of consul." 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 347 

But Mr. Jefferson was not satisfied with excluding 
" citizens alien-born" from holding office. He thought 
them even unfit to serve as jurors, "grand or 'petty, 
civil or criminal" At a later period, in 1797, in a 
petition to the Virginia Legislature, written by him 
on behalf of the citizens of Amherst, Albemarle, Flu- 
vanna and Gouchland counties, he said: 

" Your petitioners further submit to the two Houses 
of Assembly, whether the safety of the citizens of this 
Commonwealth, in their persons, their property, their 
laws and government, does not require that the capacity 
to act in the important office of juror, grand or petty, 
civil or criminal, should not be restrained in future to 
native citizens, or such as were citizens at the date of 
the treaty of peace, which closed our Revolutionary war ; 
and whether the ignorance of our laws, and natural 
partiality to the countries of their birth, are not reason- 
able causes for declaring this to be one of the rights 
incommunicable in future to adopted citizens." 

In 1798, James Madison was the ruling spirit of the 
Virginia Legislature. During this session, the follow- 
ing resolution was passed with his sanction, if not at his 
instance : " That the General Assembly, nevertheless, 
concurring with the Legislature of Massachusetts, that 
every Constitutional barrier should be opposed to the 
introduction of foreign influence into our national 
councils, 

" Resolved, that the Constitution ought to be so 
amended, that no foreigner, who shall not have acquired 
the right under our Constitution and laws, at the time 
of making the amendment, shall hereafter be eligible 
to the office of Senator or Representative in the Congress 



348 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

of the United States, or to any office in the judiciary or 
executive department." 

This resolution breathes a Native American spirit 
equal to anything afforded by the demonstrations of the 
present time. It reveals an important fact, showing 
that men then as now were willing to make use of 
their votes, while in private they were frank to avow 
their hostility to their designs and influence. As in 
the case of Thomas Keating, shot down by a leading- 
Democrat, a member of Congress from California, Dem- 
ocrats elected to office by Irish votes refused all inquiry 
into the course of Herbert. " This shows," said the 
" American Celt," " one thing : that an Irishman born, 
however loyal, is only fit to be used by the Democratic 
party, and when used, set up as a target and shot with 
impunity." 

There is a fact lying at the heart of the American 
movement, which should be kept in sight. It is this : 
it was not in the main an opposition to a class which 
roused the American feeling ; it was caused by a fear 
that the alien-born were slaves to a foreign despot. It 
was believed that the foreign vote, controlled by a 
foreign power, not only proposed but elected Presidents — 
that this foreign power, vested in the bishops of the 
Eomish church in the United States, dictated terms, 
claimed Cabinet appointments, placed its hand upon the 
free thought of the nation, and strove to muzzle the 
press and kill out the vital independence of our people. 
It was an opposition to a despotism whose tyranny knew 
no limits and was restrained by no barriers. It was 
shown that demagogues bargained for the Catholic 
vote — a vote which procured seats in the Cabinet and 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 349 

on the Supreme Bench, chaplaincies in the public service, 
foreign missions and embassies, posts of honor and 
emolument at home and abroad, places by the thousand 
in the revenue service, and the confiding to the hands 
of a Roman Catholic the entire postal department, 
which controls the transmission of the public and private 
intelligence of the country, with upward of fifty thou- 
sand offices in his gift. Exposure followed upon the 
heel of exposure, and warnings by the bugle of the 
press were sounded through the land. Thousands in 
the generous fervor of youth, and with the ripened 
strength of advanced age — maidens in their wild enthu- 
siasm, and manhood in his prime, flamed the torch of 
alarm, through glen and valley, over hill and mountain, 
until all saw by its lurid light the dangers that bestrewed 
the past with wrecks — that encompassed the present, 
and curtained the future with the drapery of gloom. 

There are turning points in history, on which are 
hinged the fate of nations and the character of centuries. 
The battle of Arbela has been declared to be the most 
important battle of ancient history, and the modern 
battle of Tours has been classed as among those signal 
deliverances which have affected for centuries the hap- 
piness of mankind. 

Neither of these important events excel in the great- 
ness of their results the battle of Quebec, in 1759, when 
the dying De Wolfe saw in his conquest of the French, 
the overthrow of Catholic supremacy in the Western 
continent. That battle was a wedge which opened the 
gates, and ultimately prostrated the walls with which 
Eomanism had shut out truth, and debarred its advocates 
from the blessings of freedom. 



350 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

It is a remarkable coincidence, that in less than a 
century, Canada should be made the second time the 
theater of strife, which in the providence of God should 
result in the speedy disenthralment of her priest-ridden 
people. Gavazzi, in Canada, ascended the proud hights 
of papistical power, and hurled from the summit of her 
supposed impregnable Malakoff the hot bolts of truth, 
which burned through her hard exterior, and kindled 
into conflagration the materials lying within. He 
opened the eyes of bondmen, and they saw their chains. 
By his speech and own right arm, he cut out a channel 
for truth — the encroachments of Eome were resisted, 
and the waves of Catholicity were commanded to stay 
their march, by a power they dare not resist. 

It seemed as if the forest-bird of Freedom had been 
for fifty years brooding eaglets — for all at once their 
shrill cry was heard in every part of our great Eepublic, 
singing again with an all-pervading voice the old notes, 
whose melody greeted the ear, nerved the arm, and 
cheered the heart of a Warren at Bunker Hill, and of 
a Washington at Valley Forge. " It was the voice of 
America, asserting her position ; declaring that hence- 
forth and hereafter, there shall be an American senti- 
ment — an American character — an American policy." 

The wisdom of Washington was made manifest when 
he said in his farewell address to his countrymen : 
11 Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence, I 
conjure you to believe, my fellow citizens, the jealousy 
of a free people ought to be constantly awake, since 
history and experience teach that foreign influence is 
one of the most baneful foes of republican government." 

Thus the American sentiment, finding its fountain 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 351 

source in the best wisdom of the past, bequeathed to us 
by the founders of the Republic, flowed on in an 
unbroken channel, sweeping every obstruction from its 
path. It belongs to history to chronicle the pleasing 
fact that Americans have ddermmed to rule America. 

The provision excluding foreigners from the Presi- 
dency, was the first great spark stricken from the flint 
of Native Americanism, and the blow which drew it 
forth was given by Washington, Hamilton, Madison, 
and their illustrious compeers. The second position 
assumed and contended for, is that the naturalization 
laws shall be uniform throughout the United States, 
and no State should admit foreigners to the political 
rights of citizens — to the right of suffrage especially — 
unless they have been first naturalized according to the 
laws of Congress. This is but carrying out the provis- 
ions of the Constitution, which declares that Congress 
shall have power to establish a uniform rule of naturali- 
zation throughout the United States. 

The third position taken, was opposition to the elec- 
tion or appointment of Roman Catholics to office, because 
of the oath of allegiance that binds them to a foreign 
power. 

Strong hopes were entertained that an American 
Catholic church would be created, and that this foreign 
potentate would be abandoned by every one baptized 
into the name of liberty, on taking the oath of alle- 
giance to the American Constitution. Thousands who 
had been reared in the bosom of the church, became 
indoctrinated into the principles of freedom of thought, 
speech, and action. They saw that their minds had 
been enslaved, and their actions were restrained bv a 



352 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

despot, who rules with a rod of iron 172,000,000 of 
people scattered over the globe. 

There is in the human heart a love of freedom which 
seems to be inherent. All men love liberty for them- 
selves. The secret of success which attended the Amer- 
ican movement, was its opposition to despotism. The 
laity of the Catholic church were not blamed for their 
actions. The responsibility was placed on their leaders. 
They saw the scepter stretched forth by the Pope, 
borne by bishops and priests, until its shadow fell upon 
soil consecrated to freedom. This one idea enabled 
this secret indescribable influence to permeate the 
breasts of millions. It was confined to no class ; fetter- 
less and free, it jumped party lines, flouted custom, 
laughed at tradition, made old men tremble, and young 
men brave, kindled anew the flickering flame of patriot- 
ism ; and all at once throughout the land, the village 
church spire, the thousand marts of commerce, the 
streets of cities, the hearths and homes of a great 
people, were illumined by the glow which threw across 
the path of a mighty nation a gladdening light. That 
light was kindled upon the altar of our country. It 
was the beacon blaze warning of past danger, whose 
glare painted upon the canvass of the future the 
treasury of an unrealized hope. 

Sad and painful as is the task, truth compels the 
historian to chronicle the fact, that this principle was 
made to subserve the purposes of despotism. When 
National Americans gathered in Philadelphia, and trav- 
eled out of the path which they had marked out, and 
become Union Savers — declaring their determination 
" to abide by and maintain the existing laws upon the 






IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 353 

subject of slavery" — a sorrowful wail arose from the 
breasts of honest Americans, whose education, princi- 
ples, and duty forbade their abandonment of the old 
paths in which every freeman desired to walk. It can 
not be concealed that, when the policy of Americans was 
so changed that it undertook to bolster up one despotism 
while it opposed another, a spirit of revolt took posses- 
sion of the Northern heart, and the ship freighted with 
priceless hopes, was dashed into a thousand fragments. 
Ye cannot serve God and Mammon. Truth and Error 
can not always walk together. There is natural hos- 
tility awakened. Freedom and Despotism are antago- 
nisms. They can not mingle. There is still hope for 
our country. We find evidences of God's fostering care, 
in the providences of the past, and in the indications of 
the present. All things right themselves in time. 
Truth is mighty and will prevail. There is a slow but 
steady progress made in political science. The lights 
of the past throw across the present path, gleams of 
hope. We find it in the outbursts of enthusiasm which 
attend the successes of freedom, and in the bitter and 
implacable hostility to the aggressions of despotism. 

The real issue now before the people is between free- 
dom and slavery. This fact is writing and re-writing 
its plaintive record on every heart. For this reason 
men preach the truth, knowing that in the words of the 
God-man, the truth gives freedom. The press — the 
Bible — the system of free schools — the enlightened 
public sentiment of this and other lands — all side with 
freedom. The very spirit and scope of the Constitu- 
tion is one of liberty and equality for all. 

It was to emancipate America from the thraldom of 
30 



354 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

foreign rule, that the patriots of the Revolution forsook 
their homes and flew to arms. The same principle in 
1854 caused their Bible-loving, God-fearing, and liberty- 
loving sons to join the ranks, battling for an American 
policy. This spirit entered our council chambers and 
pulpits — our work-shops and press-rooms — it found the 
farmer at his plough, the writer with his pen, and the 
lawyer with his brief, and one and all turned and 
greeted the Genius of Liberty, and rallied with one 
heart around her standards. 

There is an outlook for freedom left. God never 
made these beauteous plains, these towering forests, 
these lovely groves, these golden landscapes, to be the 
heritage of serfs and vassals. In the uprisings among 
the Catholics of the Old world and the New, we behold 
indications which promise much for the future. There 
is hope for freedom in the sober second thought of our 
foreign born citizens. The revolt among the Irish 
against the despotic rule of demagogues — the fact that 
as a body our German citizens love freedom — their 
general intelligence — their zeal in behalf of Kansas, 
and their cool determination to make America, which 
has furnished them an asylum from storm-driven Eu- 
rope, a place where freedom of speech shall be main- 
tained — their resistance to the aggressions of Rome — 
their native independence and love of equality — all 
speak manfully for freedom. 

Again, men are becoming convinced that the interests 
of natives and adopted citizens are identical. The influ- 
ences of free institutions are working out important 
results. Labor deserves protection. It has built up this 
Republic and made it strong. The hostility awakened 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 355 

against those who would render labor disreputable, is 
an auspicious fact. In 1780, the whole exterior com- 
merce of the Republic amounted to about eight and a 
half millions annually; now our annual exports exceed 
250,000,000, while our internal commerce is nearly 
600,000,000 per year, without estimating our home 
consumption. Then, a few ill-constructed roads and 
water courses nature had bestowed, were our only means 
of inter-communication; now, more than 17,000 miles 
of railway and numerous canals, which embrace in con- 
tinuous lines of navigation, 80,000 miles of lake and 
river, render the most northern corner of Maine nearer 
in time to Florida and Mexico, than was Boston to New 
York in those days. This is the product of free labor. 
The interests of the laborer are all opposed to despotism, 
as may be seen whether we look at Italy or South Car- 
olina. In this fact there is hope. Though Disunion 
utter its stormy threat — though the Archbishop of New 
York asserts that the laity shall be enslaved — though 
Truth falleth in the street, and Error, Haman-like, 
rides its gay palfrey — yet the Christian does not 
despair, for he beholds the hand of his God shaping and 
controlling all things, and in the stirring events of the 
hour, he greets a movement which is working out the 
disenth raiment of the race. The patriot does not 
despair, because from a thousand sources the fiat has 
gone forth, that the march of aggression shall be 
stayed, and that, if the battle continues long enough, 
the sun in his shining course shall lio-ht a race of free- 
men without falling upon a bondman's home. For 
broad and grand and mighty as is our Republic, it has 
not yet attained its zenith, nor will it until the seedlings 



356 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT. 

of despotism translated from a foreign soil and nurtured 
on our own, shall be uprooted, and then it will flame 
the splendor of its orb over an area of freedom broad 
as an ocean-girt continent. 

Truth goes forward in straight lines. It mocks the 
slavish fear of the task-master, and proudly utters its 
clarion-cry, that freedom is her child. Before man can 
check its progress in America, he must lay an embargo 
on the vagrant winds that fan our mountain brows — 
wave the grain in fertile valleys, and fill the sails of 
commerce. The lightning harnessed to thought, as is 
steam to trade, must be chained. If he would fetter 
the streams of influence, he must muzzle the press, put 
out the lights of science, and change the immutable 
purposes of Omnipotence. For beneath all outward 
forms there is a love of freedom strong and pure — ever 
reaching forth unto those things which are beyond — a 
love deep as the under-currents of old Ocean, and bound- 
less as the blue heavens : while this love endures, and 
it is eternal — there is hope — hope that the citadel of 
freedom will rise higher and still higher, until watch- 
men standing on its proud summit, shall behold our 
conquering banner borne by loyal sons, and waving 
proudly its ample folds, over a nation joined in the holy 
fellowship of heaven-born Peace. 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 357 



CHAPTER XVI. 

A GLANCE AT EUROPE IN 1848 AND 1849. 

Pio Nono — Joseph Mazzini — The hopes built upon Italian Freedom — 
The overthrow of the Republic by the French — Persecution of 
Bible readers. 

Let us now turn back throe years, and behold Europe 
in her terrible struggle for freedom. The years 1848 
and 1849 were memorable eras in European history. 
Events of thrilling interest filled our public journals, 
and were daily leaving their impress upon the minds of 
millions. Nations were tossed on the fiercest billows of 
political excitement. France was intoxicated with revo- 
lution. Austria was trembling before the onward 
march of liberal ideas. Hungary and Italy had joined 
hands in a fraternal strife to wrest their liberties from 
the iron thrones of despotism. 

Gregory XVI., supported and sustained while living, 
had been for two short years wrapped in the folds of 
death, and in his chair was Pio Nono, who had as Car- 
dinal won imperishable honors by his kindness to the 
poor and suffering. As Pope he began immediately to 
favor the wishes of his people, and the enthusiasm, not 
only of the Romans, but of the whole Italian govern- 
ment, was raised to the highest pitch. Three thousand 
noblemen had been called back from exile to the bosom 
of home. The captives were set free, and the doors of 
prisons once more permitted the breath of freedom to 



358 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

cheer their lonely occupants. The officers of State were 
no longer confined to the priesthood. The press, un- 
muzzled, spoke freely the wishes, and breathed forth 
the suppressed hopes of the people. Justice was pub- 
licly administered, aud the disgraceful proscriptions 
and imprisonments of Gregory were forgotten in the 
general amnesty of Pius IX. Austria opposed him, the 
priesthood plotted against his life, but Pius, throned in 
the hearts of the people, was safe. His name resounded 
over Europe, and was hailed with delight by every 
friend of true liberty in the world. 

At this time it was proposed that a Nuncio should be 
sent to the land of Washington. The intelligence was 
received with acclamations by thousands of the followers 
of the Pope, and even Protestants looked with approval 
upon the prospect of enlightening Europe, by means of 
a friendly interchange of sentiment. 

Rome, sitting on her seven hills, was regarded very 
much as is the captive eagle — his plume having been 
shed away, the lustre of his wing and the brilliancy of 
his eye dimmed and lost, but which on hearing the call 
of his mate, high in air, revives again, and with flash- 
ing eye looks toward his mountain eyrie, with a longing 
and steadfast gaze. At length descrying the form of 
the free bird, as with strong wing he breasts the gale, 
the captive's eye kindles with its wonted glow, the 
strength comes back to his unused wing, he rises, 
spreads his broad pinion, clutches the chain in his strong 
talons, the luster appears again on his ragged plume. 
He hears the cry once more, and shaking himself, he 
stretches out his neck, and with redoubled strength 
breaks the fetters which he has worn too long, and with 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 359 

a wild scream of joy regains \u< lost freedom. And 
thus it was hoped it would be with Italy, " that eaged 
nightingale of Europe." Though Rome was sitting like 
a jewel-diamond in an emerald ring, her Bona wasted by 
internal feuds, and weakened by the galling chains of 
an intolerant despotism — it was believed that she had 
heard the call of freedom, and that her prophets were 
ready to lead them out of bondage, and were pointing 
them forward to a Canaan which was real. We saw 
Italians rising at the instigation of their leaders. A 
Republican government was proclaimed. Its Consti- 
tution was faultless. Its armies performed prodigies 
of valor, and the fame of its statesmen found its way 
to every clime. 

Kossuth by his eloquence had called from the moun- 
tains of Hungary two hundred thousand noble hearts, 
and melted them into a livid thunderbolt of wrath, 
which in headlong fury fell upon the Austrian legions. 
Wherever his foot pressed the earth, mailed Magyars 
sprung to arms. In Hungary the principles of freedom 
were at work, and the masses everywhere expressed 
their willingness to die in their defense. The peal of 
victory had answered this call to arms. Banners were 
floating from church spire and palace top in triumph, 
and liberty was perching proudly upon the standards 
of Hungary and Italy, when the clock tolled the knell 
of 1848 and the advent of 1849. 

During this period many thousand copies of the Sa- 
cred Scriptures, in the Italian language, were published 
in Florence, and some ten or twelve thousands were put 
into circulation among the people, who received them 
with great avidity. For the space of a year this was 



360 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

done with the consent of the government, and in accord- 
ance with the laws of Tuscany. God was publicly recog- 
nized, and many happy souls found their temporal 
liberty but the precursor of the rising orb that was to 
flood their souls with celestial light. Literature began 
to be cultivated. The history of our country and the 
more able productions of our statesmen, crossed the seas 
and found readers beneath the shadows of tottering 
thrones. 

In Italy, " with the exception of the occasional visits 
of Swiss, French, and English Protestants — ministers 
of the Gospel, and laymen — the influences which ope- 
rated to occasion this movement were wholly Italian. 
Little meetings for expounding the word of God were 
held in private houses. For several months also, faith- 
ful young men from among the Waldenses, in the 
valleys of Piedmont, preached the Gospel in the Italian 
language at the Protestant Swiss chapel in Florence, 
which, for more than twenty years had been sustained 
under the auspices of the Prussian embassy, and in 
connection with it. It was thus that the truth made 
silent, but effective progress in the capital of the Grand 
Duchy of Tuscany, and its immediate vicinity." 

The French Eevolution of February, 1848, gave a 
new direction to the enthusiasm, not only of the Ital- 
ians, but of the friends of liberal institutions all over 
Europe, awakening demands for administrative reforms, 
and popular systems of representative governments. 
For these sweeping changes the Pope was not prepared, 
and his popularity which had reached a brilliant zenith, 
began to wane. 

On the 16th of November Eome was in revolt — the 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 361 

palace was surrounded by an infuriated populace. 
Count Rossi had fallen by an assassin's dagger, and a 
change of ministry was demanded. The Pope, deserted 
by his army his ministry and advisers, surrounded by 
a crowd threatening him with death, with his army 
fraternizing with the foe — when hope had fled, and 
dangers were thickening, reluctantly gave his signa- 
ture, threw up the government" and declared himself 
a prisoner of State ; whereupon, a Republic was pro- 
claimed. On the 24th he escaped from the Quirinal, 
in the disguise of a footman of the Bavarian minister, 
and arrived safely at Gaeta about four miles from 
Naples, where he lived in regal splendor housed in the 
palace of Pontici. 

Milan capitulated on the 4th of August, and the 
Grand Duke of Tuscany took refuge in flight. The 
Italian Waterloo was fought at Navora, a small town 
in Sardinia, on the 23d of March, 1849. Charles 
Albert was defeated. 

On March 3d, 1849, Mazzini, together with Armelli 
and Saffi, was appointed a triumvir, and received with 
his colleagues the full power of the young States. In 
the meantime Pio Nono was residing at Gaeta, devoting 
his time and energies to the arrangement of the theory 
of the Immaculate Conception, which he afterward 
put forth as a panacea for the rebellions and heresies 
of the tempest-tossed world. 

The ruin of the temporal power of the Papacy had 
been effected. From the time when the first blow of 
the French Revolution was struck in 1789, it had been 
tottering. The spiritual power of the Pope was left 
untouched, but in regard to foreign nations, Napoleon 
31 



362 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

bade him hands off. No nation asked his advice. His 
bulls fell like hornless scraps of paper, the sport of the 
idle winds. Lower and still lower went the flag of 
his power, until it was trailing in the dust. In 1849, it 
became certain that some other artillery was required 
to gather together those scattered fragments of power, 
which once had swayed nations, and to eject his opponents 
from the Quirinal than bulls and denunciations. Clouds 
began to gather again over the doomed city. It was 
thought dangerous to allow a Eepublic to grow up in 
the heart of Europe. While it existed life, action, 
stir and bustle met the eye at every turn. A celestial 
energy descended upon man, and infused new life and 
energy into his crushed and withered powers. 

Continental Europe trembled when she beheld the 
altar fires of freedom blazing from the Seven Hills of 
rejuvenated Rome. Her thrones reeled beneath the 
monarchs' feet, and all saw in the crackling flames 
enwreathing the palace of Charles Albert, the kindling 
of a fire which threatened the proud superstructures of 
monarchical despotism. 

The Eepublic of Rome, with Joseph Mazzini at its 
head, became the flag-staff of Europe's hope, from 
which the banner of freedom proudly waved. The 
influence of literature was felt — newspapers were estab- 
lished — books were published and extensively read — 
science and art never flourished better, than when their 
growth was fostered by the enlightened and generous 
sentiments, which influenced the Italian mind. But in 
Europe the thinker is considered dangerous. There 
'tis a crime to unlock the treasure-house of thought, and 
share one's wealth with paupers. The Bard of Avon, 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 363 

in his play, the plot of which was laid in Rome, has 
described the spirit which controls the Holy See, as 
triple-crowned and seated in his pontifical throne he 
governs poor priest-ridden Italy. Like Julius Caesar, 
he seems to say : 

" Let me have men about that are fat, 
Sleek-headed men, and such as sleep o' nights; 
Yon Cassius has a hungry look — 
He things too much : such men are dangerous. 

11 He reads much, 
He is a great observer, and he looks 
Quite through the deeds of men — loves no plays. 
Such men as he be never at heart's ease, 
Whilst they behold a greater than themselves; 
And therefore are they very dangerou 

And this feeling seems to pervade the church of Rome. 
But during the history of the Republic, we find that 
Cassius becomes the noblest Roman of them all. " Room 
for the thinker, room !" was wafted on every breeze, as 
the ranks of men opened for Mazzini to take his proud 
position as ruler of the Italian Republic. For this rea- 
son, Naples sent an army to reinstate the Pope. Spain 
sent a force to assist at the ceremony. France was 
meditating an expedition to Civita Vecchia, to maintain 
the due influence of France in central Italy, and with 
a view to occupy the city aforesaid, and. it might be, 
Rome. Opposed to this mighty conspiracy, were Maz- 
zini and his patriot band, composed of students, trades- 
men, literateurs, statesmen, and soldiers. 

A writer in the Edinburgh Review remarked that the 
government of Rome, at this crisis, " was more in accord- 
ance with their own high claims, than with the opinion 
generally entertained of them." History has already 



364 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

furnished a home for the record of illustrious deeds, 
which have stamped the/ Republican army with the 
signet-mark of immortality. It enables us to see Rome 
from June 3d, when Oudinot recommenced his attack, 
to June 30th, when the Assembly resolved that the 
city could defend itself no longer — as a continuous scene 
of combat, lire, ruin and carnage, which only ended 
under the martial law of the French. 

It permits us to gaze upon Mazzini, whose official 
acts, from the day of his election, the 29th of March, 
to the 2d of July, when Rome, her last cartridge spent, 
ceased her heroic but unavailing resistance against the 
cowardly assailants, who dared only to bombard the 
city. Joseph Mazzini has been denounced as a visionary 
enthusiast. Let those who do so, see him alone and 
unscared in the midst of tumultuous Rome, earnestly 
and not without hope, remonstrate with the French — 
welcome and defy the Neapolitans — and then prepare 
to resist one and all. There were no visionary schemes 
or impracticable suggestions made. See him superin- 
tending the casting of cannon, and every preparation 
for governing or defending the Republic. See him, 
while the French army was approaching, issue a procla- 
mation, providing for the security of the peaceable French 
students, and as an evidence of the spirit of the govern- 
ment, when about to meet and contend with thirty 
thousand besiegers. Go, watch that pallid brow and 
restless eye as he gazes upon troops inflamed by his 
inspiring speech, while they repulse Oudinot and his 
republic-destroying legions. If still unsatisfied, follow 
him to the desk, where the contest was carried on with 
the pen instead of the sword. Listen to his words, as 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 365 

he plainly but calmly points out the utter worthlessness 
of the professions of friendship on the part of the French, 
coupled as they were with the declared intention of 
occupation, incompatible with independence, and in 
contradiction of every profession of the French in behalf 
of freedom. 

Follow him, as he shows that of all enmities to the 
Eoman people, the friendship of the French was the 
most fatal ; for it paralyzed their defense against 
more declared enemies by distracting their operations, 
and by even stopping the supply of arms which would 
enable them to defend themselves; and when, in refe- 
rence to the protest, that they came to give effect to 
the free choice of the Romans, now held down by a 
government of force, he challenged them to point out 
a single proof that their government was other than 
freely chosen, or a single proof of reaction or regret for 
the expelled clerical government. Behold him. as before 
the world he declares the final resolution of the people, 
in whose name he spoke, never again to submit to a 
Pontiff-King, and at the same time appealing with words 
that rang throughout Europe, to the French, that if 
they could not strike for them, at least not to strike 
against them ; if they would not recognize the Republic, 
at least to stand by, and see if left to herself she could 
not repel the Austrian and Neapolitan armies. It has 
been well said, that there is not a reasoner in the world, 
who would not admit the argument of the Triumvir as 
unanswerable. 

For some thirty days of the siege, his food was little 
more than bread and coffee, and his clothes were never 
taken off. It seemed as if his heroic spirit was sufficient 



366 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

to sustain him. He slept only at such intervals as he 
could snatch between the constant emergencies of his 
work, and the continual throng who came to him, even 
for personal consolation. His noble forbearance toward 
the enemy — his cool decision with troublesome friends— 
his dignified bearing in the extremity of defeat — were 
alike worthy of his exalted nature. 

When at last the French ventured into the city, to 
prove that his power had not been maintained by terror, 
and also to observe the bearing of his Eomans, Mazzini 
walked unarmed and unprotected, for some days through 
the streets, until his friends told him he was mad. But 
no man touched him. Even the French soldiers were 
awed by the sublime spectacle of that pale, careworn 
man, his black hair grizzled with the last month's 
anxiety and toil, passing through them, like the ghost 
of the Eepublic, severe and silent, his very patience 
like a martyr's endurance, rebuking the murderers. 

But the time for Europe's disenthrallment had not 
come. Mazzini, careworn and weary, turned his face to 
England, where he has since resided — now, as then, the 
hope of Italian freedom. Italy is the object of his love. 
For Italy he toils, and over the graves of her myriad 
martyrs, ever and anon, he pours forth tributes of love, 
which have awakened sympathy in every patriot's heart. 
French despotism prevailed. The Pope was reinstated 
on his Pontifical throne, which is now upheld by French 
bayonets. The reaction was general throughout Italy, 
save in Sardinia. Austrian bayonets and French tyranny 
have not destroyed freedom there. Sardinia stands like 
a great rock in a weary land. 

The Grand Duke returned to Tuscany, and was 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 367 

reinstated upon the throne of his fathers. Jesuitism 
regained its supremacy over the old man's mind, and 
it was not long " till one privilege after another, and 
one liberty after another was abolished, together with 
the Constitution of 1848." The Court of Tuscany was 
induced to adopt measures to arrest the spirit of inquiry, 
and its consequences among the people. The Italian 
preaching in the Swiss chapel was interdicted. In the 
Spring of 1851, Count Piera Guicciardini and live others 
were arrested and thrown into prison, for the sole offense 
of reading the New Testament. At the moment when 
the gens d'armes broke in upon their simple and truly 
primitive meeting for spiritual education, they were, it 
is said, engaged in reading the fifteenth chapter of the 
Gospel by John, which commences with the words, " I 
am the true vine, and My Father is the Husbandman." 
A strange truth to be sounded in the ears of Romanists ! 
Persecution rekindled her fires. Thousands of pa- 
triots fled their homes, some escaping to England and 
others to the United States. The record of martyr 
sufferings, scattered by means of the press, found read- 
ers everywhere. Jesuitism, successful again in Europe, 
turned its attention to the new and great Western con- 
tinent, " with a rising empire which stretches from ocean 
to ocean, marching forward to grasp the scepter of the 
world — a continent with all the vigor of primal life, 
and all the enginery of the most magnificent political 
and social system man has ever seen." 



368 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 



CHAPTER XVII. 

THE INFLUENCE AND PROSPERITY OF PRO- 
TESTANTISM AND POPERY COMPARED. 

The Truth gives Freedom — The church of Rome is enslaved — Free- 
dom — What it is doing for the nations — The past and present condi- 
tion of the ruling nations — Estimates of the numbers and power 
of the churches — Protestantism occupies the center of Europe and 
America — The triumphs of Truth — The condition of Catholicism 
throughout the world. 

It was a truth taught by the past of all ages, that 
the experience of mankind, from age to age, affords the 
best light to direct our ways of any human means, and 
the record of the word of God is our only sure guide to 
eternal life/ 7 The Saviour of the world in speaking to 
the Jews, said : " And ye shall know the truth, and 
the truth shall make you free." 

The Catholic church believe that their traditions 
which have been handed down from age to age, that the 
pretended miracles which were palmed off upon an igno- 
rant populace centuries ago, that the bulls, decrees of 
councils, and the proceedings of the Council of Trent, 
the record of which forms their works of reference in 
theology, and the sum total of their licensed literature, 
that the system of espionage, beggary, and persecution 
instituted by Hildebrand — are and should be considered, 
as the guides and landmarks in accordance with which 
they are to live, upon which they are to hang their 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 369 

hopes for the future, and from which they are to receive 
their present joy. Thus they lose their freedom. They 
go harnessed to toil, goaded by fear and superstition, 
and sink into the grave worn out with fetters borne, 
not by labor performed. The free thought is chained 
by circumstances or condition. The past forms a chain 
to fetter the limb iB the present. Their traditions and 
ceremonies enslave the believer, entomb thought and 
shackle limb. 

Not so With truth. This is Heaven-born. God is 
truth. Truth comes from above. It is changeless ; 
the same yesterday, to-day and forever, and can be 
relied upon under all circumstances, in all conditions, 
places and times. It does not forge chains, but knocks 
them off bv riving freedom. Those governed bv human 

■/OCT S v 

wisdom, traditions and formulas, resemble blind guides 
leading the blind : they must and do fall headlong into 
ruin. But those led by the bond of truth journey heav- 
enward. Their path is ever flooded by the streaming 
sunlight — their hearts grow, their views expand. The 
plain of thought widens before them. The heart is 
vocal with praise — the spirit, free from the contracting 
influences of error, roams at large, receives instruction 
from every object, every leaf, every rock, and every 
fact. God is their teacher, and nature their schoolhouse 
— the world their country — humanity their brothers — 
the teachings of the Saviour the lesson to be learned, 
and he their Divine Guide. 

There is at the present time a great central thought 
lifting itself out of the deep strata of humanity — it 
pervades with its influence all classes and conditions of 
society — it has built for itself a temple, higher and 



870 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

grander than all other structures — a temple destined 
to overlook the beauteous homes of the earth-born race. 
That thought is freedom. It has created for itself a 
want that is now being felt more than ever before 
throughout the world. 

This love of freedom is natural. In every age, in 
every clime, and among every race its history may be 
learned, its influence observed. To a great extent 
however, this so called freedom is a delusion. It is a 
freedom from restraint, from oppression, from law, that 
is desired by the masses, not the Bible freedom, not the 
freedom which truth gives. Perfect freedom is the 
absence of all restraint. A mere created and dependent 
being can not enjoy absolute and unqualified freedom, 
because his finite and dependent nature necessarily 
imposes certain restraints which he can not surmount. 
Constituted as we are with reason and conscience, our 
freedom can not be called rational freedom, if employed 
in contravention of the dictates of right reason, or in 
known disregard of truth, which is to be the standard 
by which reason acts ; or in opposition to the movings of 
conscience, the monitor within us. " Liberty is a rela- 
tive thing. It must conform to truth and justice as its 
rule, and conduce to happiness as its end." The truth 
alone can give this freedom. The warfare to be waged 
is with error, not with men. The weapons to be used 
are the truths of God's word, not the bayonets or bullets 
of armies. The church of Christ composed of different 
sects, but united by a common interest, is the grand 
moral army on whose banners is emblazoned " Christ 
and his Gospel" The one to be followed, and the 
other to be proclaimed. 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 371 

Our Saviour organized this army when upon the 
earth. At that time he called about hiui a few igno- 
rant fishermen and tax-gatherers, and with these as 
standard-bearers sent them out to teach the people. 
Behold the result. In three hundred years Christianity 
was acknowledged throughout the Roman empire, and 
a nominally Christian king sat upon the throne of the 
Csesars. The secondary influence of the truth overcame 
the rude barbarians of the North ; it tamed the wild Hun 
and warlike Magyar, and would have subdued the fol- 
lowers of Mohammed, had not its pristine glory departed 
with its original purity and strength. At this time 
three of the continents, beside many of the larger 
islands are included in Christendom. Europe, the 
smallest continent of the five, contains one quarter of 
the population. The latest estimates of the population 
of the world make it eleven hundred and fifty millions. 
Pagans, six hundred and seventy-six millions ; Chris- 
tians, three hundred and twenty millions ; Mohamme- 
dans, one hundred and forty millions, and Jews, fourteen 
millions. Of Christians, the church of Rome numbers 
one hundred and seventy millions ; the Greek and 
Eastern churches, sixty millions, and Protestants, 
ninety millions. 

Russia rules the Northern portion of Asia, while 
England holds sway over one hundred millions that 
occupy its Southern portion. Thus it is easy to discover 
that God intends to open Asia to the Gospel by means 
of Europe. One hundred years ago the Russian mon- 
archy was unknown. The Republic of the United 
States takes precedence in rank among the nations of 
the Western continent, and for education, liberty and 



S72 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

advancement is surpassed by none upon the Globe. A 
century ago the frame-work of this Eepublic lived only 
in dreams ; India and China were barred against Chris- 
tianity ; the power of England was in its infancy, and 
Turkey and Mohammedanism were casting their length- 
ening shadows over the cherished hopes of Christianity. 
In 1806 there was no Austrian empire, while now the 
heel of Austrian despotism rests upon the neck of Hun- 
gary, her sword hangs over all Italy, and stays with its 
hilt the hand that holds the crosier. 

Three hundred years ago Spain, among the nations 
of Europe, towered peerless and alone in power and 
influence. Her banners floated in pride from the 
palace of the Montezumas and the temple of the Sun. 
The isles of the Ocean, and the vast plains of South 
America and Mexico, were occupied by her soldiery and 
governed by her priests. Now she is poor and weak at 
home, while Mexico and the greater part of South 
America heed not her power. 

England and America invigorated by the indirect 
influence of which we have spoken, unfurl flags that are 
respected on every sea, while the keels of their ships 
cut every river, and sea, and ocean. Under the aegis 
of their protection missionaries take their stand on 
every shore, and the ships that extend their commerce 
convey the Bible to every port. 

China, numbering three hundred and fifty millions, 
resembles a nation of grown children. The truth as it 
is in Jesus, was scarcely uttered in their hearing " Till 
the leaven began to work, and a nation the laughing- 
stock of the world begins to manifest an inner life that 
gives omen of a happier future. It is an important 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 373 

and cheering fact, that the third among whom the Gos- 
pel is preached, rule the other two thirds. No heathen 
nation has power beyond its own borders, as is evident 
by the past condition of China, and the present position 
of Turkey, sustained by England and France, as she 
trembles in the presence of Russian greatness, that 
hangs over her like a suspended avalanche. Africa is 
being lifted into notice. God evidently has rich bless- 
ings in store i"or that benighted land. England is sub- 
duing her Southern portion, France her Northern, and 
America is extending civilization to her Western coast. 
Large numbers of Africans, who have been hopefully 
converted to God in America, are going thither, bearing 
with them the torch of truth. The press, the school- 
house and the pulpit are all bringing their agencies to 
bear upon her night of ignorance and superstition, and 
the new-created light is fast bringing out of the chaos 
of her past, a beauteous superstructure with which to 
adorn her present. 

In an inferior but yet important sense, social and 
political liberty have followed in the train of Bibles. 
The Saviour had in view the spiritual emancipation 
which the Gospel achieves for every part into which it 
comes, but it is so rich in power, so overflowing with 
blessings to man, that it extends far beyond the hearts 
of those who become true disciples, and even over the 
condition of those who remain strangers to its influence. 
As the house of Obed-edom the Gittite, in which the 
Word of God was temporarily deposited, found a bless- 
ing in its presence w^hich extended over all that he had ; 
so the existence of the church of Christ and the presence 
of the Gospel in any nation, bring temporal benefits 



374 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT? 

which even the ungodly share. This is made very evi- 
dent in the history of the nations throughout the Chris- 
tian era, and is impressively exhibited in the present 
condition of the world. When the Lord uttered the 
sublime assurance, " The truth shall make you free," 
and organized his army composed of one hundred and 
twenty men, and sent them out to subdue the world by 
the power of the Gospel, he gave them no weapon but 
truth and nothing but error to oppose. 

Nominal Christendom is divided into three parts. 
First, the Northern European or Greek church. Second, 
the church occupying the Southern portions of Europe 
and America, the Eoman Catholic church ; and third, 
that occupying Central Europe and America, the Pro- 
testant church. 

The Greek church numbers sixty millions. Its visible 
head is the Emperor of Kussia. For a liberal policy in 
science, literature and the freedom of the press, it is far 
in advance of its sister, the Eoman Catholic church. 
Schools and colleges flourish in Eussia, Turkey and 
Greece. They derive their support partly from public, 
and partly from private munificence. There is a spirit 
of progress manifest in everything connected with Eus- 
sia. Her people seem desirous of obtaining an education. 
Their youth are thronging the colleges both of St. Peters- 
burgh and Constantinople. American missionaries and 
English scholars are frequently appointed to fill the 
vacant professorships. This elevates Protestantism in 
the estimation of the people, as the great proportion of 
the Greek priesthood are wanting in attainments in 
letters or science. The Greek church is therefore 
accessible to the GospeL 



TS AMERICAN HISTORY 375 

The Roman Catholic church numbers one hundred and 
seventy millions. Its head is the Pope — in theory ; in 
fact, as we have elsewhere shown, the head of the church 
of Rome or its governing power, is to be found in the 
order established by Loyola, the Jesuit. The present 
condition of this church mav be described in a single 
sentence : Paralyzed at the heart, and alive at the extrem- 
ities. Her weakness results from her seeming strength. 
The power of armies and of superstition is all that 
keeps her in existence. 

Who is there that does not know that if French bay- 
onets did not uphold the tottering throne of the Pope, 
that if the hand that holds the crosier did not rest upon 
the hilt of an Austrian sword, in less than one day 
the Italian people would rise as one man, and with one 
united paean of victory they would hurl His Holiness 
from his Pontifical chair, disrobe him of his mantle, 
drive him from the country, and throw his tiara after 
him ? The whole country where the Pope rules supreme 
is in ignorance and rags. A mountain of superstition 
seems to be superimposed upon them. During the last 
three centuries, to stunt the growth of the human mind 
seems to have been her chief object. " Throughout 
Christendom, whatever advance has been made in know- 
ledge, in freedom, in wealth, and in the arts of life, has 
been made in spite of her, and has everywhere been in 
inverse proportion to her power. The loveliest and most 
fertile provinces of Europe, have under her rule been 
sunk in poverty, in political servitude, and in intellect- 
ual torpor ; while Protestant countries, once proverbial 
for sterility and barbarism, have been turned by skill 
and industry into gardens, and can boaet of a long list 



376 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

of heroes and statesmen, philosophers and poets. Who- 
ever knowing what Italy and Scotland naturally are, 
and what four hundred years ago they actually were, 
shall now compare the country around Rome with the 
country around Edinburgh, will be able to form some 
judgment as to the tendency of Papal domination. The 
descent of Spain, once the first among monarchies, to 
the lowest depths of degradation, the elevation of Hol- 
land, in spite of many natural disadvantages, to a posi- 
tion such as no commonwealth so small has ever reached, 
teach the same lesson. Whoever passes in Germany 
from a Roman Catholic to a Protestant principality ; in 
Switzerland from a Roman Catholic to a Protestant 
canton ; in Ireland from a Catholic to a Protestant 
county, finds that he has passed from a lower to a higher 
grade of civilization. The Protestants of the United 
States have left far behind them the Roman Catholics 
of Mexico, Peru and Brazil. The Roman Catholics of 
Lower Canada remain inert, while the whole Continent 
round them is in a ferment. The French have doubt- 
less shown an energy and an intelligence which even 
when misdirected, have justly entitled them to be called 
a great people. But this apparent exception when 
examined will be found to conform to the rule, for in 
no country that is called Roman Catholic, has the Roman 
Catholic church during several generations possessed 
so little authority as in France. Said Mr. Brooks : 

"In Rome, under French domination, there have been 
one hundred and twenty assassinations in twenty-four 
hours, with a population of only one hundred and eighty 
thousand people ! 

" Compare this Papal city (Rome) with any in this 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 577 

Protestant land. Compare any of the Catholic cities 
of Europe and South America with the Protestant cities 
of Europe and on this continent Behold the city of 
Naples and the city of Brotherly Love ! The city of 
Mexico and the city of Boston ! The city of Rome, 
with its seven hills and all its glorious classic history, 
and little Manhattan Island, which makes up our own 
imperial city ! Contrast the Empire of Rome with the 
little island of Britain. Picture the time when the 
mightiest of the Caesars led the Roman army against 
the barbarian Britons. What is Rome now. and what 
is Britain now? And what has wrought these stupen- 
dous changes? I will tell you. England is Protestant, 
and therein lies her gigantic strength. America i3 
Protestant, and therein is the chief source of her power. 
Italy is priest-ridden, and that is the canker-worm that 
has eaten out her very vitals. We owe our government, 
our liberty, our prosperity, mainly to our Protestant 
religion. If evidence was yet needed of Papal domina- 
tion in matters of civil government, look at Switzerland. 
Her crags and peaks and ' cloud-capped towers/ are all 
symbols of liberty, but there only nine years ago, the 
Holy See became the instrument of civil war, and 
colleges and convents, even the convents of nuns, were 
filled with arms which were used to deluge the land of 
William Tell with fraternal blood. The little Republic 
of San Marino has been haunted by the same fatal 
power, and was only saved from Roman cupidity, a few 
months since, by the merciful interposition of the French. 
Stand upon the Rialto of Venice, and recall the days 
when Giulius II., Paul V. and Clement Y. let loose the 
dogs of war upon that beautiful citv of the sea. 
32 



378 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

" The Komish censorship of the Press, and its hostility 
to works of a liberal character, show the anti-republican 
character of this illiberal power. Though it may some- 
times be done, it is not lawful to read Bacon, Locke, 
Hobbes, Kant, Des Cartes, Grotius, Machiavelli, Mon- 
tesquieu, in books of Philosophy ; Buffon, Copernicus, 
Gall, Cuvier, D'Alembert, in science ; Milton, La Fon- 
taine, Ariosto, Victor Hugo, in poetry and prose ; nor 
Hume, Gibbon, Kobertson and Botta, in history. The 
works of our own Thomas Jefferson are also named 
among the books which it is not lawful to read." 

More recently, English literature was denounced by 
the Catholic press of St. Louis. It said : 

" The want of a literature sound in principle and 
ennobling in its aim, is becoming every day more keenly 
felt and painfully acknowledged. We have indeed, an 
abundance of books, such as they are, but they do not 
meet our wants. Generally speaking, they are such as 
are hurtful to know, and no great loss to be utterly 
unacquainted with. For us, and we may add for all, 
the entire body of English literature is irremediably 
tainted. History and even poetry, are made to combat 
against truth, which seems to be the very last thing 
that is sought after. ° ° ° 

" We seek truth from those who we well know were 
ignorant of it, or indifferent to it, and borrow our prin- 
ciples from those who had none but the worst. There 
is no doubt that much of the prejudice which blinds the 
minds of many excellent persons at the present day, is 
to be referred to the popular historians of England — the 
Gibbons, the Humes, the Hallams, and in our own day 
to the unprincipled Macaulay and his servile imitators ! 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 379 

We all know how vivid and lasting are first impressions, 
and that frequently they give a coloring to the mind 
which no amount of knowledge and experience can 
afterward entirely efface. And thus the poison of error 
and bigotry is imbibed in early youth, and determines 
forever the character of the man. Few in after years 
have either the time or the opportunity, or even the 
inclination, to examine statements which they have 
rashly adopted as truths ; and x< these chance to coin- 
cide with their own views and inclinations, they are con- 
tent to remain as they are. With the greatest confi- 
dence then, we assert that to the Catholic mind, aln. 
the entire body of English literature is hurtful and 
often poisonous. 'Tis true that truth is often found 
there, but mixed with error, and is often made to wear 
the mask of falsehood. Generally speaking, the infor- 
mation it affords is " a knowledge of good bought dearly, 
knowing ill." Take for example the various popular 
historians of England ; examine their works, and you 
will find all, with one illustrious exception, having 
much stronger claims to the character of romancists than 
to the reputation of grave historians. Their writings, 
especially since the period of the Reformation, seem to 
have steadily in view the perversion of truth. Calum- 
nies and misrepresentations, refuted and corrected a 
thousand times, are again repeated by the next swarm 
of compilers with the most unblushing audacity, and 
seem quite a sufficient authority to idle declaimers and 
vapid lecturers, as they supply congenial food to their 
diseased minds." 

The remarks just quoted in regard to English litera- 
ture, are in keeping with the principles advocated and 



380 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

the views entertained by the entire clergy of the Romish 
church. The shaft is apparently aimed against English 
literature. Perhaps it is not quite time to decry Amer- 
ican writers and their productions ; but who does not 
know that if there be truth in the assertions made, they 
apply as well to our own as to the literature of our 
mother? English literature belongs to us. It is a 
part of our patrimony, which we received from the land 
of our sires. " Can distance abolish history, or the 
waves of the sea wash away the lineal blood of genius ? 
Their fathers 7 songs are ours, and their familiar sayings 
our household words." American and English literature 
are one; and whoever would strike out the names that 
shine like stars in the widening firmament of a world's 
thought, does that " which not enriching him, makes 
us poor indeed." 

Catholicism has for centuries found a deadly foe in 
the free thought of untrammeled England and Germany. 
When Luther threw off the chains of slavery, and dared 
with his single arm the world to battle, then began the 
contest between truth and error, which has resulted in 
the emancipation of millions, and its destiny is not yet 
half accomplished, Eome feared truth then ; she fears 
it now. These books are bad things for children, for 
they teach them to think ; and all know how mean and 
unworthy of support appear the paraphernalia and 
mummeries of the Catholic church to thinking men. 
Let men read books, and they learn that there is a 
better mediator than a drunken priesthood — a better 
God than the Pope — a nobler literature than licen- 
tious question-books, and " Guides " to perdition. In 
Rome, history, philosophy, poetry, travels, novels, and 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 381 

periodicals are put under the ban of the Pope, and find 
a place in the " Index. 91 Macaulay, Gibbon. Hume, and 
Hallam are there, and they could not find better com- 
pany. M All that the world has known of wise, or witty, 
or useful, is there. All the master discoveries and 
principles which flood the ages with light, all the 
impartial history, all the purest of dogmatic theology, 
all the pror'oundest of mental, political and natural 
philosophy, are in the Index: and the sorest affront to 
ambitious authorship would be exclusion from that 
volume, through approbation or extreme contempt. " 
Such are the feelings expressed by the able writers of 
the land. So little do thinking men regard the denun- 
ciations of the Pope, the Catholic clergy or press, that, 
instead of striving to avoid it. they court it as a pass- 
ticket to universal favor. One has well said, that 
11 Should the dark ages return, and once more run their 
round and vanish, men would seek out the Roman 
Index, in order to measure the volume of light extin- 
guished in the gloom of barbarism and bigotry. That 
would be the great photometer of former civilization — 
an inventory of lost wits, to save a future Ariosto a 
trip to the moon." 

It would be doing great injustice to the Catholics of 
America, to believe for a moment that they indorsed 
the sentiments of some arrogant leaders. They know 
full well that f-*a tree is known by its fruits;" that 
Christ said, "Let your light shine : " and that any 
church which, for fifteen centuries, has been striving to 
put out every vestal lamp of truth, can not have been 
with Christ and learned of him. This attempt to under- 
mine the love with which we cherish English literature, 



382 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

is equaled only by the attempt made throughout this 
broad Republic to destroy a people's confidence in our 
system of free schools. The one has failed ; the other 
will meet with a like defeat. In the language of Cha- 
pin, " This enterprise of thought and sentiment — this 
vast achievment of intellectual and moral power — 
employs a great army, from its newsboy trumpeters 
and its artillerymen of the pen to its veteran leaders 
— its Irvings, and Bryants, and Bancrofts, on whose 
breasts the world has set its stars of the Legion of 
Honor. And each of these is loyal to its interests, and 
zealous for its reputation. American literature is a 
literature diffused among the people, flowing from the 
richest fountain heads of wisdom along ten thousand 
channels into every house — carried up into every story, 
brought to every level — an intellectual Croton, as long 
and as broad as the continent, with as many reservoirs 
as there are schoolhouses, and as many hydrants as 
there are printing offices ; a literature that is not penned 
up for a class and served up in costly books, but that is 
sent abroad by every facility and style of cheapness, 
because it belongs to a people who can read, and there- 
fore can be trusted. It is the literature of a live 
people, who don't trudge in the harness of feudal for- 
mulas, or lie baking in the sun, but who feel that they 
are part and parcel of a great world, and mean to know 
what's going on. If a man has a bold thought, let 
him utter it. It can do no harm in this open air of 
freedom, though it were made of camphene and gun- 
powder. If anybody has caught a new planet, or seen 
the sea-serpent, publish the fact — everybody wants to 
know it. If the Russian bear has had his claws cut by 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 383 

a scimetar, and goes howling back toward the Baltic, 
let us hear it; we shall all be glad to hear it. And it 
is the literature of a people who find in this diffused 
intelligence not only the gratification of curiosity, but 
the magnetism of a world-wide sympathy — wherever 
man rejoices or suffers, suffering and rejoicing with 
him." 

Every student of history is familiar with the fact that 
wherever Papacy holds absolute sway, there superstition 
weaves for the mind the pall of ignorance and a moral 
death. Penance and long weary pilgrimages, take the 
place of faith in Christ and implicit confidence in the 
Gospel. Poor, deluded victims ! it is sad to see them 
wandering the world over after health and peace, but 
never coming to the Great Physician. 

There are ninety millions of Protestants. They 
occupy central Europe and central America, and hold 
the key to the commerce of the world. They are more 
powerful, exert a wider influence, and are doing more 
for the world's advantage, than the one hundred and 
seventy millions of Koman Catholics. In commerce, 
science, and the means of widening the area of truth, 
they have outstripped that competitor, which in the 
sixteenth century plotted their ruin and extirpation. The 
civilization of Protestant America and Europe is civili- 
zing Asia, Africa, New Holland and Madagascar, while 
numerous islands are being Christianized. 

"There is not," says Macaulay, "and there never 
was, on this earth, a work of human policy so well 
deserving of examination as the Eoman Catholic church. 
The history of the church joins together the two great 
ages of human civilization. No other institution is left 



384 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT. 

standing which carries the mind back to the times when 
the smoke of sacrifice rose from the Pantheon, and when 
the camelopards and tigers bounded in the Flavian 
amphitheater. The proudest royal houses are but as 
yesterday when compared with the line of the Supreme 
Pontiffs. That line we trace back in an unbroken 
series, from the Pope who crowned Napoleon in the 
nineteenth century, to the Pope who crowned Pepin in 
the eighth ; and far beyond the time of Pepin the 
august dynasty extends, till it is lost in the twilight of 
fable. The Republic of Venice came next in antiquity ; 
but the Ptepublic of Venice w r as modern when compared 
with the Papacy ; and the Republic of Venice is gone 
and the Papacy remains. The Papacy remains not in 
decay — not a mere antique, but full of life and youthful 
vigor. 

" The Catholic church is still sending forth to the 
furthest end of the world, missionaries as zealous as 
those who landed in Kent with Augustine ; and still 
confronting hostile kings with the same spirit with 
which she confronted Attila. The number of her chil- 
dren is greater than in any former age. Her acquisi- 
tions in the New World have more than compensated 
her for what she has lost in the Old. Her spiritual 
ascendency extends over the vast countries which lie 
between the plains of Missouri and Cape Horn — coun- 
tries which a century hence may not improbably contain 
a population as large as that which now inhabits Europe. 
The members of her community are certainly not ^ 
fewer than one hundred and fifty millions, and it will 
be difficult to show that all other Christian sects united 
amount to one hundred and twenty millions. Nor do 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 385 

we see any sign which indicates that the term of her 
long dominion is approaching. She saw the commence- 
ment of all the gw ernments, and of all the ecclesiastical 
establishments that now exist in the world, and we feel 
no assurance that she is not destined to see the end of 
them all. She was great and respected before the 
Saxon had Bet foot on Britain — before the Frank had 
passed the Rhine — when Grecian eloquence still flour- 
ished at Antioch — when idols were still worshiped in 
the temple of Mecca: and she may still exist in undim- 
inished vigor, when some traveler from Xew Zealand 
shall, in the midst of a vast solitude, take his stand on 
a broken arch of London bridge, to sketch the ruins of 
St. Paul's." 

A few years since, the Bride of our Republic, dressed 
in the white vestal robes of the altar, stood upon the 
Pacific strand, and called after the millions of China. 
Ship after ship of industrious men answered that calL 
They come to our borders — they are digging in our 
mines, and are immerging into the light of a Christian 
civilization. 

Gold has for ages been the star hanging over tho 
domain of enterprise. After it have gone with eager 
haste, not the shepherds of Judea, but the nations of 
the Globe. The love of it has been the instrument 
used by a far-seeing Providence to bring about the sub- 
jugation of India — the breaking down the walls of 
China — the discovery of America. It has bridged our 
rivers — tunneled our mountains — covered our oceans and 
seas with the white wings of commerce — netted our 
continents with railways, and strung with wiry nerves 
the Globe. Steam has made the three continents 
33 



386 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

neighbors, and enabled America to become the almoner 
of blessings to far distant China and Japan. The love 
of gold has peopled California with a mixed population 
— it has leveled Western forests, and in one view made 
the valley of the Mississippi the lazar-house of Europe ; 
while in another that valley is becoming the cradle of 
the nations, and hastening to become the capital of the 
world. In it is found the dividing line of empire. 

Overstocked Europe is emptying her refuse popula- 
tion upon our shores, and Jesuitism is making tremen- 
dous exertions to control this vast accumulation of ma- 
terial, to dethrone liberty and put out the altar fires of 
freedom. The Jesuits, like the frogs of Egypt, come 
into our very bread-troughs, by means of nuns, servants 
and music teachers. The priesthood, with their allies 
scattered through our families, schools, churches and 
legislatures, are permeating every portion of the com- 
munity, busying themselves with the substrata of 
society — opposing education — burning Bibles — crying, 
" Down with free schools !" Is it not the saddest sonnd 
man ever heard — that cry lifted up from over a million 
of freemen, calling, "Down with free schools, away 
with the light of the Gospel?" It sounds like the 
dirge of a funereal wail, sung by two millions of Cath- 
olics, led by Jesuits and priests, as they hasten to bury 
the hope of Christendom, which has for years been, that 
the votaries of the church of Rome would lose their 
hostility to truth, to education and an unmuzzled press, 
by mingling with our people, and by enjoying the 
advantages therefrom. 

It is to oppose this common enemy that an alliance 
should be formed among Protestants. We should labor 



CN AMERICAN HISTORY. 387 

in all practical ways in pushing forward the interests 
of the Cross of Christ. Dr. Comings, the great cham- 
pion of Protestantism in London, said on one occasion, 
u It is our solemn duty to cultivate this union. We 
are only insuperable while we are inseparable. To 
enforce and illustrate this advice, let me call upon all 
true Christians to look less at the defects by which 
their brethren are deformed, and more intensely at the 
beauties by which they are distinguished. Act the part 
of the painter who was called upon to sketch Alexander 
the Great Alexander had a scar upon his forehead, 
which he had received in the course of his Macedonian 
battles, and the painter was perplexed to find a way by 
which to escape showing this deformity on the portrait 
At last he hit upon the happy expedient of represent- 
ing the monarch sitting in his chair, his head leaning 
upon his right arm and the forefinger covering the 
scar. ,; As Protestants let us place our finger over 
every scar that sectarian pride or bigotry has caused, 
and unite together i n breasting the incendiarv waves of 
Popery in all forms and conditions. Then will a pater- 
nal sympathy take the place of a sectarian animosity. 
God will be honored, and his cause will be advanced. 

We will now narrow down our circle, and let it girt 
the thirty millions that inhabit the United States and 
Canada, that we may get at the numerical strength of 
our foe in America. M The Annals of the Faith," the 
great Roman Catholic book for the details and sta- 
tistics of the Eoman church, gives the sum total of 
Catholics in the United States in 1853 at one million 
six hundred and sixty-three thousand five hundred. In 
a note it states that the real population is larger than 



388 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

that, while Archbishop Hughes estimates the number at 
two millions. The American Almanac for 1852 gives 
the number of Catholics at one million two hundred and 
thirty-three thousand five hundred. Now it is estima- 
ted that there are in the United States three millions 
of born Irish, and four million five hundred thou- 
sand of the descendants of the Irish, making in all 
seven million five hundred thousand of Irish ; one 
million more than in all Ireland. The priests them- 
selves suggest that there ought to be in the United 
States three million nine hundred and seventy thou- 
sand of Catholics, whereas there are not two millions. 
Add to the seven million five hundred thousand the 
hundreds of thousands of Catholic German, French, 
Swiss, Spanish, and Italians, and their descendants who 
have emigrated to this country, and at once w r e find 
that Romanism has sustained a great loss. The truth 
and the influence of our institutions has broken the fet* 
ters that bound them, and permitted them to emerge 
into the enjoyment of freedom. 

In 1820 the population of the Canadas may have 
been five hundred and twenty thousand, of whom per- 
haps three hundred and eighty thousand were Roman 
Catholics, and only one hundred and forty thousand 
Protestants ; exhibiting nineteen to seven of the whole 
country as in favor of the Roman Catholic church, its 
doctrines, and worship. In 1853 the population of 
Canada numbered, it is assumed, two millions, of whom 
nine hundred and forty thousand belong to the Roman 
Catholic church, and one million and sixty thousand to 
the Protestant religion ; showing nearly eleven Protest- 
ants to every nine Catholics. The latter have gained 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 389 

five hundred and sixty thousand in thirty years, the 
former nine hundred and twenty thousand. The 
Roman Catholics have more than doubled their number, 
while the Protestant army has increased seven fold. 

Let us now return to the United States and notice a 
few facts which present the triumphs gained by Protest- 
antism in a still stronger light 

" Maryland, the first Slate where the Roman Catho- 
lic church gained a footing, now contains eight hundred 
and seven Protestant churches, and only sixty-five 
Catholic congregations. In Florida the Catholics early 
made settlement. Xow there are one hundred and 
seventy Protestant, and only live Catholic churches! 
Louisiana was settled by the Catholics, who have now 
fifty-five churches in the State, while the IV- testanta 
have two hundred and forty-seven con ore nations. In 
Texas, the Catholics were the first sect in point of time, 
they now have thirteen churches, but the Protestants 
report three hundred and seven societies in tiie State. 
The number of Episcopal, Lutheran, and Roman Cath- 
olic churches are nearly the same throughout the 
country, but each of these denominations have about 
one-eleventh of the number of the Methodists, scarcely 
one-eighth that of the Baptists, and not one-fourth that 
of the Presbyterians. The entire Protestant population 
of the country, compared with that of the Catholic, is 
about twelve to one." 

The faith of our fathers, their devotion to the cause 
of truth, and zeal in building up the institutions of 
freedom, has made Rome tremble at the mention of our 
Republic. The Catholic priesthood with Father Mathew 
at their head, made strenuous exertions to keep the 



390 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT 

Papists from leaving Ireland, and in preserving the 
faith uncorrupted of those emigrating to America. 

At the heart we have shown that Popery was para- 
lyzed — not so at the extremities. Should the Pope 
be banished from Italy; should his mighty temporal 
power crumble to dust; should he become again the 
bye-word and laughing stock of Europe, the battle 
would rage no less furiously here. Within the last few 
years the Catholic population has more than doubled. 
Our country is fast changing its position in relation to 
Popery. From the time the Catholics of Spain mur- 
dered the Huguenots of France, on the plains of Florida, 
hanging over them the inscription, " Not as Frenchmen, 
but as Protestants we kill you" to within a short time, 
the Catholics have labored in a secret way. New 
England Puritans had beaten them across the ocean, 
and De Wolfe conquered Montcalm on the hights of 
Abraham, and they knew from sad experience that 
opposition would be powerless, and persecution would 
prove their speedy overthrow. They have endeavored 
by loyalty to our institutions, and by prating largely 
of the glory of our Eepublic, and the rights of man, to 
palm themselves off upon the country and world as 
really lovers of freedom, and almoners of the truth. 

Popery, let it be remembered, has never been satis- 
fied with an equality of political and religious rights. 
When Frederic of Prussia established equal privileges, 
the Catholics rebelled and endeavored to destroy his 
power. In England, equal rights were followed by the 
Gunpowder Plot ; in France by the revocation of the 
edict of Nantes. When the Grand Duke of Tuscany 
established liberty in his own sunny clime, the Jesuits 



IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 391 

frightened the poor old man, and filled his prisons with 
the demoted Madiai and other adherents to a common 
faith. In America, when the arch of our present school 
system spanned all classes with its resplendent bow of 
promise, the Catholics shouted, " Down with the school 
system I" The Catholic press openly avows and defends 
the intolerance of the church of Borne, and even reproves 
those whose timidity causes them to shrink from the 
open avowal of the real features of Popery. " We 
hold," said the Bishop of St. Louis, " the truth, and 
nothing but the truth ; and it is not fair to sacrifice us 
to the prejudices of ill-instructed and timid Catholics, 
or of heretics, whose delicate nerves a bold statement 
of Catholic doctrine may happen to shock.'' 

Such revelations being daily made by means of the 
press, the pulpit and the platform, have caused many to 
tremble lest Popery, triumphant and perched upon our 
high towers, should one day, and that quickly, mock 
with bitter scorn and derision the blindness of our citi- 
zens. The religion that has well nigh smothered and 
put out the altar fires of truth in Europe, is now as in 
former times willing to mount to power upon the 
bleeding hecatomb of millions. 

There is no doubting this, whether we look at France, 
at Mexico, or Canada. Doubt history ye who can — 
believe that Catholicism has changed in its relentless 
nature — but the experience of a thousand years affirms 
with trumpet-tone what all the organs of the Catholic 
press proclaim, that when the day arrives for a general 
uprising in this country, then the mournful tragedy of 
St. Bartholomew will be played again, and if necessary 



392 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENT, ETC. 

foreign powers will lend their aid to strike a death- 
blow to Protestantism in America. 

But thank God! that people who gave birth to liberty 
— who loosed the pinions of the Bird of Freedom, and 
permitted her to make mountain summit and woodland 
vale vocal with the wild free note she sings — that people 
who have dug the grave of despotism — are prepared 
to dig a deeper one for Eoman Catholicism, and to give 
the principle which has beggared Europe an appropriate 
burial upon the forest continent of America. The hum 
of commerce shall be its requiem — happy and enlight- 
ened millions its pall-bearers-— the Bible its disease, and 
an untrammeled literature its epitaph ! 



THE. END. 



C 125 












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